Exactly one year ago today, I stepped on an airplane, then another and another and landed exactly on the other side of the world.
I joined 17 others for a medical mission in Tanzania organized by the St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine and the Orthodox Church of Tanzania. We went out to remote villages and set up clinics to provide care for hundreds of Tanzanians otherwise unable to travel or pay for the medical care they needed. We saw and treated scabies, tb, hiv, crazy out of control infections, fungal rashes and some gnarly wounds. We held hands. We hugged. We cried. We saw another part of the world in a way we could never have quite imagined.
It was quite a trip. But the real trip has continued since my return. To say I’m changed from my experience in Africa would be a huge understatement. To say it opened my eyes would be like comparing a 22 f-stop to a 1.2. I am not the same woman I was one year ago today.
To articulate my experience and to identify the changes and to portend what is still to come would be unjust to all that it is. Most simply, I am humbled. Shaken. Driven. I need less. I want even less. The Tanzanians have NOTHING. They live freely and happily withOUT so much. Yet so many of us here in the States have so much, and want so much, and ‘need’ so much…
So my journey continues. To a more simple way of living. To giving more freely. To loving more openly. To becoming a better me…
I leave you with a Tanzanian proverb: ‘The noblest question in the world is to ask what good can you do.’
