I got up at least five minutes past my alarm.  I was awake, I just didn’t want to get out of bed and face the shocking cold air for the sake of a typical Monday morning.  Plus, it left me in a bad mood to hear the alarm, that same wake-up song every morning, yet it was my fault that I hadn’t changed it. The sky was still night-time dark and  I was too asleep to turn on the light, let alone force my eyes to adjust.  I pulled on a sweatshirt, some jeans and a backpack full of books, grabbed a granola bar and walked out of the door in the blur of morning haze.  Snow sloshed beneath my boots and it took forever for the car to warm up.  I was two minutes late to first period.

    I was ready to get a move on with my life, do something productive.  I didn’t feel accomplished when I finished my homework on time. It didn’t even matter if I turned in my homework at all.  Grades have never really motivated me.  I used to like learning itself, and I was worried that soon, I would become irreversibly disengaged.  I was becoming somewhat like a zombie and nothing could reenergize me.   

What I wanted was to be sure.  I wanted to invest fully in a passion, but I was scared that it would mean not being able to love anything else.  Afterall, the most powerful works are the ones done with the whole heart, the ones that often take a whole lifetime.  To me, if I couldn’t tell you a singular passion, I didn’t actually have any, and if I didn’t have any, what would I become?  I wanted to be sure about everything down to my favorite color. I knew that I had to invest in something.  I had to figure it out quickly.

I hated the feeling; it was like my stomach was stuck too far up my rib cage, limiting the amount of oxygen available to my lungs.  Or maybe I couldn’t breathe because I was not alive enough to validate the use of oxygen.  I’d lived with this discomfort for too long.  I felt sick.  I decided that I needed a change.

    I’m sure my face was still red from the hot tears that came with the goodbyes.  I sat on the airplane next to a stranger, a girl my own age, with the same passions and desires as my own, but we talked only of the weather and why we chose the blue backpack over the black one. I stared out the airplane window at the clear blue sky until eight hours had passed and we landed at a refuel station.  A refuel station in Africa.  It was my first moment of fear.  I did not expect to see the huge clay ruins that surrounded the airport.  I expected the neat little tin crumbles of my Costa Rica.  Or an urbanized city with the modern wood paneled structures of the seventies.  Things were starting to differ from my expectations, and I did not sign up for my expectations to be torn apart.  I signed up for the trip that would confirm what I expect of who I am, or at least of who I want to be.

    Sixteen more hours in the airplane passed before I could see the ground again.  I looked down across the landscape and was surprised by how many lights I could see.  They scattered for miles around the city.  Its was weird that they weren’t in the rows like the ones in a parking lot back home or clumped like the ones that shine from building windows.  I couldn’t even make out the city limits.  As we neared the ground,  I realized that these lights were not electrical at all. They were fires.  They were lit all over in seemingly random portions of wood and savannah.  The horizon was indefinite in the darkness and I couldn’t tell the difference between the stars and wildfires.  The world seemed bigger. I couldn't tell whether I should feel excited or intimidated.

    Sixteen girls and four teachers walked out of the airport, initiating four months of an unforgettable trek through five countries in Southern Africa.

    Sometime during the semester, I forgot why I came in the first place.

    First I fell in love with history.  It was everywhere around me.  It was more relevant and alive and recent than I had ever seen it.  It impacted the people around me in their daily lives; from Southern Africas’ ever shifting governments to the violence of its recent past; from the price of meat in Zimbabwe to the reclamation of Mr. Peter’s home in South Africa.  I experienced the untold of fear to even discuss government and politics in a perfectly safe country.  I saw both sides of land reform and apartheid. I saw the pros and cons of major international organizations and thought about what I would do if I could change it.  Truth is, I am going to grow up with the potential to change history.  Someday I could.  I mean, some of us will have to;  why not me?  One potential path clears.

Then I fell in love with science.  The anti-malaria pill became a daily routine for me, although it wasn’t for the people who lived there, the people who had their whole lives worth of opportunity to get malaria.  And even worse than malaria, HIV/AIDS spread like a wildfire, infected one out of every ten South Africans.  Even things like lack of sanitation and diarrhea are underrated.  Diarrhea kills the most people out of all water related diseases, even more than malaria. And speaking of water, we had to purify ours.  Water seems so limited when you have to pump it from a borehole or shower in a bowl.  And we saw so much wildlife.  From game drives to scuba dives, we saw everything from rhinos to painted dogs.  And we became aware as the seeming simplicity of poaching became something complex.  Poaching digs deep into both African and Asian cultures; ancient medicine and religion.  I could help with some field of science; maybe genetics or wildlife.  I have the passion.  That makes two possible paths.

Then I fell in love with the world.  This one I can’t pinpoint.  People are beautiful and their cultures are beautiful and their languages are so beautiful.  Everyone seems to have passions; all of them valid.  I got to see what makes them tick.  In a way, it gave me a little tick. That makes a million possible paths, all of them seem desirable.  A million and two paths.

I have more options than ever. I see more beauty in the world than ever.  There is no way that I am going to ever find one thing to love, and I don’t see how anyone could ever expect me to, but that is okay.  I am productive enough that I can love them all.  One passion for every day of my life if I have to.  Or I could simply do something great when the time comes and then, when I am finished, I can do something else.  Life is short, and it means that I can only pursue a limited amount of work.  It’s a good thing that I am eager to start.

Mangwanani- That means good morning in Shona.  It’s funny because it is a good morning.  In fact, morning is the best part of the day because it means getting to live through something new and beautiful.  It means that you get to learn another day’s worth.  Even though the African sunrise is enough reason to get out of bed, I would face the cold of any winter morning now that I know how to manipulate my own day to feel worthwhile.