it took me four tries to stay logged on long enough to post this, AND, my dashboard is currently in French.

Tonight while she is washing her hands, Susan tells me suddenly that when she was in grade school, she and all of her friends wanted to be doctors. She sticks her head into my room and as she dries her hands on my towel she says, ‘we thought it would be the easiest course.’ I smile and share the memory that jumps into my mind: all of my kids (who I was teaching) back in the village wanted to be pilots. I can remember this day particularly clearly, out of a whole month of ‘all about us’. I vividly picture each child standing next to me, leaning forward, hands cupped around their mouths, whispering these secrets that deserve upmost security:

‘Teacher, I want to be a pilot.’

‘I want to be a- a pilot.’

‘Teacher, I want…I want to be a pilot.’

And on and on: pilot, pilot, preacher, president, pilot. You would have thought it was ‘P’ week.

As I am talking to Susan my eyes without warning are flooded with tears. Oh, nothing’s wrong- I just miss, so badly, those sweet, long, hot sticky days in the classroom, hour after hour, patiently repeating myself in English, settling arguments, cleaning up messes, listening to long diatribes in multiple languages, handing out gluesticks and safety scissors and pieces of chalk. Reading books and singing songs. Playing football. Walking home with three, four or five children clinging to my hands, my fingers, my wrist, my arm.

I don’t really miss living in the village- it was too sheltered; I felt like I was suffocating. But I miss teaching, I miss feeling like I was doing something effective and useful and good.

And I’m tired.

I’m tired of fundraising and worrying about networking, worrying about the impression I’m making. I’m tired of spreadsheets and phone calls and emails and numbers and plans and details. I’m tired of thinking about money and tired of trying to find ways to entertain white adults and convince them to trust me, to trust this crazy idea.

But more than that, I’m tired of not doing the job I love. I want to spend long hot summer days counting, over and over again, to a hundred, in English, now in Swahili, now by even numbers, now by tens. I want to listen to stories that end in ‘and that is the end of my story.’ I want to work with children who so desperately need shelter, love, security and an education. I want to hold their hands. I want to know them.

I want to be so busy, so exhausted that at the end of the day I barely have time to check my email, let alone write this blog.

(I’m not looking for ‘you’re almost there! etc’ comments, though you, my dear friends, are always an encouragement to me. I’m just…thinking.)