Life in Omaha is quiet. There are no donkeys braying. Cars only honk once in a while. You can’t hear people talking outside your house.
Life in Omaha is busy. People walk fast. Cars drive fast. Food comes fast and goes fast.
Life in Omaha is empty. There just aren’t a lot of people around. No one jostles you as you try to get through the crowd. There is no crowd.
Life in Omaha is comfortable. Sitting on my couch in the air conditioning with a wide array of food and drink choices should I become either hungry or thirsty.
Life in Omaha is familiar. There aren’t a lot of possibilities of what could be going on in a given situation. I usually can figure it out pretty easily.
Life in Omaha is my life. This one is hard for me to remember. Sometimes I wake up from my daydreaming and realize that I’m here and Mali is very far away. My body is finally realizing that it is in Omaha and not Bougouni. I wonder how long it will take my mind to do the same. Often what I’m seeing and doing here is disconnected from what my mind is seeing and doing – it is busily processing Mali thoughts and memories.
Tomorrow is my fifth day back in Omaha. I’ll continue doing what I do. I think about Mali. I sleep as much as possible. And I begin to pick up my life again.
Right now you are thinking Omaha vs. Mali—how things differ, how people differ, friends here and friends left behind in Mali. There will always be a sense of nostalgia as you move from one place to another, from one stage of life to another. But as the days, months and years go by you will become a person whose attitudes have been shaped by both cultures and varied friendships. This binding of the two cultures will make you a unique person in your thinking, in your vision and even in your responses to speech and actions. Even as your mind floats back and forth these days, value that as part of the making of one of God’s beautiful daughters.