It’s a beautiful breezy 75-degree day with no humidity and I’m all bundled up in blankets and a sweatshirt. I guess I’m not used to Michigan weather yet. After 13 days back in the United States there are still a lot of things I’m re-adjusting to. The smells of the USA are different than I’m used to (sugar, cleaning supplies, fresh cut chemical-saturated grass), I’m not used to wearing shorts, blending in with the people around me is a change, and I’ve been having to remind myself that I don’t have to shake everyone’s hand anymore. I’m a bit out of practice when it comes to being an American but I’m relearning quickly. Pets and kitchen mixing machines, however, have proven to be the most difficult adjustments so far.
Last Saturday my family’s curious little sheltie dog, Kaia, got into my backpack and ate a sample medicine packet—the medicine and the tin foil lined package both. I’m not used to having a curious little pet poking around my room and the mistake of leaving my backpack on the floor proved to be a big one. As soon as we realized Kaia had eaten medicine my mom hopped on her computer to google “what do you do for a dog that has eaten way more medicine than they should?” (or something along those lines). Thank goodness for 24/7 wireless internet! Needless to say, Kaia got really sick, the event turned into a class five life-threatening crisis, and I felt terrible!
Around midnight I found myself driving to CVS pharmacy in search of Pedialyte for my dog. I walked through the automatic opening doors into the store filled with bright tungsten light and rows and rows of medicine and was immediately overwhelmed. My dog doesn’t know how fortunate she is! There are kids in Central Africa dying right now for lack of medicine. The Pedialyte, unfortunately, wasn’t enough and a few hours later Kaia was rushed off to the pet hospital for emergency care. It was a rough few days but after lots of tests and iv’s, Kaia is now home and recovering. I’m so glad America has pet hospitals.
On a lighter note, yesterday was my birthday! I decided that despite the fact that American processed sugar has been making me sick ever since getting home I couldn’t have a birthday without a cake. It’s been a while since I’ve used a mixer, though, so when I went to mix up the cake ingredients instead of flipping the switch to lock the mixer in place I turned the mixer on full blast causing a volcano to erupt all over me and across the whole kitchen. This little set-back didn’t stop me, though, and I managed to make a lovely little cake with chocolate frosting, raspberries, strawberries, and a mixture of short and tall yellow candles. Definitely fit for a birthday party! The problem was that the short candles melted the middles of the tall candles and before I could get all the candles lit my cake had gone up in flames. Literally. Who thought up the Western tradition of putting birthday candles on cakes anyway? It seems a bit strange if you stop to think about it. Between birthdays and the fourth of July I’m beginning to think Americans are a bit pyromaniac.
In spite of accidentally causing my dog to overdose on medicine and ruining birthday cakes, I’ve enjoyed my first 13 days back in the United States and I’m hopeful that sometime in the near future I’ll be back to being a somewhat normal American again. I don’t know, maybe I’ll never stop comparing the prices of things with the cost of providing clean water for an African community or sending a kid to school for a year. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. I wish I could end this blog post with a really great conclusion about being back in the US and how my time in Africa has changed me and how I will forever be a better person because of it but I am incapable of that right now. I know that Africa has left its mark on me but I’m still in the middle of processing and readjusting.
