Divided Celebration

Well, I don’t now how this topic came to my mind but during this celebration I had plenty of time to think how we celebrate our events. Being from different faith, Christmas was just like another day. I celebrated it without much belonging. Well considering my level of meeting others socially, it was quiet a lot. Anyway, the thought which came to mind of being divided in our celebration is quiet common and well debated. Sometimes I wonder how much divided we are but yet so close. We believe in different religions, different occasions, different values, and different culture and when we share the situation together we let go of such different and we do not think of it. But inside we are divided, we can not change it……..

Roma Roma Roma

To be or not to be

Last night finally the words came out as simple as direct as the truth and once again they surpised me, the way they were already there and I was the only one who did not know. I could have really changed the future months, all the decisions, the doubts, but I did not. Maybe because I'm stuck. Or maybe because I really felt it was the right choice not to let it go.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? "

Mist, Haze & Fog

Today, after a week of taxing work to close financial year, I managed to sleep 8 hours straight. I got a little chance to think about the misty Voinjama’s mornings. The mist, haze or fog, you can name it what ever you like, but it has so much of magic. Many times, I thought of getting out and just walk through the haze, but the warm bed calls every thing off. Voinjama misty mornings depict at times the haze on my mind, the mist that covers the reality and the fog which stops from seeing things coming. But yet it has its magic, the magic that takes me to the place of soothing pain. It’s hard to explain and give it words to the state I am referring to. Well, I don’t know about others, how they feel but at times I feel trap in the reality, frustrated, wanted to leave every thing and just go. But than fear the pain and suffering of saying good byes to the people, places and misty mornings I know. Whatever the case is, some time certain things do frustrates me but at time, its makes me confused that whether I am frustrated from those things, or frustrated that I cannot see through the mist, the haze or the fog. I let the Voinjama misty morning to take on my minds mist, haze and fog, and am ready for yet another day

Crazy!

I look at people and their arguments sound really crazy: I can't really follow anymore the reason of their stress; I think it's just because I'm on holiday, anyway what drive them crazy seems to me really not a big deal. I don' want to look like the classical "mission person" saying that all western concerns are useless complaints of spoilt children. Stress is real also here, and we really suffer if we are stressed, no matter what is the cause, I remember I was stressed for the same reasons when I use to live here. It's just that I'm experiencing a strange feeling, of being here but sometimes looking things from outside . I really like home and Rome, I like everything I'm eating, every person I'm meeting, every hug I'm giving, every smile we are sharing, every plan we are doing, every discussion we are having, every walk I'm taking, everything I'm shopping and I'm already thinking that too soon I will have to leave this again and I will be sad. But still sometimes, I have a feeling of non involvment which put me me in a strange hanging bubble.
Maybe I'm the crazy one. But is very nice being on holiday!

Home

Even if I lost my connection flight, even if I did not sleep, even if I don't have my lagguage (and it took me 1 hour and 30 min to do a simple declaration in the lost and found of the airport), even if Fiumicino logistics is even worse than the one of my office (seriously worse), even if I don't find my winter clothes because my mother hid them somewhere, building up a very complicated puzzle of boxes and now she does not remember the secret reason of their organization, even if I'm half displaced between my house and my aunts'house, even if winter this year is not too cold, despite all that I'm home.
While closing my eyes on the flight from Brussels I realized that I was still dreaming about Voinjama bumping road, about sushi in Monrovia, my Country Director, my office, our house, my life in Voinjama. And I may dream about it again in these vacations.
But the first step I took out of the airport, without lagguage, without sleep, after 2 hours spent in the burocracy and complains of passangers without their bags, I heard the most refined roman conversation you can ever listen to: the comments the day after il derby Lazio-Roma (such a tragedy Roma lost 3-0), the conversation where every citizen of Rome, no matter if male, female, old, young, businessman or unemployed will give you his own, unquestionable, sofisticated and emotional interpretation of how to play football, trying to explain exactly why the winner won and why the loser lost.
And I smiled, smelling this delicate winter. That's home.

Do you still....?

Sometimes people we don't expect, are much more sensitive than what we think. The fact is that they are just quiet, they don't ask, they don't question, but they see and they feel right exactly what is going on. They are able not to look upset, nervous, worried, but they know.
And we keep on thinking that everything is under control and nothing is wrong because everything is quiet with these persons, so it's quiet also with our self.
Until they ask. And they ask so naturally but so straight forward to the point, that you understand that they already knew, that everything was in front of you and that what you are trying to hide to yourself is there, evident on the table.
And especially, I understood that I've no answer, not the answer I would like to give, not with the strenght I would like to give it and I don't know what I can say. We lie much more often and naturally then expected. And we justify it. And I look at it without surprise nor astonishment. Sometimes it's not easy to give the proper answer. Because there is no truthful proper answer. There is a mixture of emotions and I hope I can go through it before trying to give an answer.

Sweet and bitter

On my way from Voinjama to Monrovia I always start missing the trees and the village while I'm approcing the town. I can't like Monrovia and working in the HQ is never that interesting, maybe because I don't really have a place here.
Yesterday my trip was especially concentrated on the trees, on Lofa and on all the persons I met there. I was looking at my trip through the eyes of a person leaving this mission, and even if I'm much more dramatic than him (very controlled infact), I started feeling again that acute pain that I feel when I leave something forever. When you know that everything you have experienced so deeply won't come back. Sometimes it's a relief, so I thought at the beginning of my mission here, now it's also a pain, because I will also miss this experience. Even if I did not expect to.
Sweet and bitter is mission life: so intense and so surprising, it connects you with persons you never expected and in a way that will stay forever, in a way that memory will save during the years and that "small small" has changed a bit all of us, and will follow us wherever we go. And that will be there again, magical souvenir of not ordinary life, wherever we meet again.

Pandora Box

Well, the days are going by, the age is growing and time is passing, the Pandora Box of life is revealing mysteries and myths. But above all the most interesting thing it’s revealing the "life" it self. We are so different in different things but yet so similar. Interestingly, the life offers us too many options and too many people. We need to understand one thing, as we all know that nothing in this is immortal, every thing have to finish sooner or later. That’s hard rule of life. Similarly every thing that comes to our life is going to end sooner or later, if it does not!!! Well any way it will..

As usual, you may find it negative, but reality is always bitter…… :-)

Stuck is the word

When we called this blog Stuck in the Mud, I was not focusing that much on how the word "stuck" was appropriate for what I feel in mission life. More generally is appropriate for my life.
And so, words like "distance", "stuck" "farewell", come back more and more often in this blog and not only by chance. I really feel that everything I experience in the moment I leave it, even if rationally I'm keeping the distance, is penetrating inside my skin, my sight, me feelings, my memories, my emotions. It can be a slow or shocking process, but it keeps on happening.
And once these things, our reality, the day-by-day mission life enters inside my images I get stuck. And, as Yasir said, (every now and then he can say something reasonable), when we are stuck we loose the real perspective of what we are doing. Everything looks more dramatic, for good and for bad, to finally understand, when we change the scenario, that it was not so important to concentrate all our life on it. Or even if it was, that we can anyway move on and have other interests, and keep the good memories with us, grow up, become stronger.
I can't avoid to get stuck: I can use better tyres for the rainy season, or better, I'm trying to fix the road. But I'm somehow prepared to get stuck, stuck in myself first of all. And in some way I respect and I appreciate it. I know it's me and I also know that, no matter how long you get stuck, you always come out.

Break Up

I am not suppose to put it like it, but had to without mentioning the actual events. The break up of one of the favorite couple of Voinjama

Me and chiara experienced the trauma one went through went mission life fling or love is over. We tried to council him and tried our best to help him in coping up. Well my own judgment is that mission isolation makes you involve with some body to an extent that you stop seeing the things beyond and the moment you go away from the situation, you realize it might not be for the best. Anyway, I had to say that I felt very bad and sad about the break up, I thought that they look good together….

Night Night Night...

I certainly remember the noises of Voinjama night... Indeed they scared me so much that I had to find a temporaly housemate while both of you were away! It is so true that night is full of special noises!...and now I think maybe I should have taken Y's fan into my room to reduce my fear??

Here, the noises of the nights are not so different than daytime... it is just, traffic, traffic, traffic... I almost forgot that how many cars we have in cities, how fast they can drive on paved roads...and how much noise they make!

Enjoy the sound of night while you can!!