you belong in Africa

said the same woman who 2 years ago said

you shouldn't be a French teacher.

the Wanderer's Tea House on Grand River was the prefect place for this conversation with the most influential professor of my life. I took every class she offered throughout my undergraduate work at Michigan State - even though her French phonetics & linguistics classes for me were more like trying to study neuroscience (or at least on that same level of difficulty) and required weekly visits to her office hours just trying to make sense of the trees or liaisons or the e-muet, ect ect. She is the best

THE best

and that is why I suffered through her excruciatingly challenging classes,
to learn from Her.

No matter what you do, Nicole,
I know you will help a lot of people

she said to me the day she allowed me to bury the burden I'd been carrying around for years of not truly wanting to be a French teacher - or a teacher at all for that matter. But that is a difficult thing to come to terms with, making a decision to back out of something you'd been working towards for so, so long.

My confession
I don't want to be a teacher

& her response
I don't think you should

gave me the confidence I needed to pack up this idea (& what I felt was pressure) of becoming a teacher, withdraw from the College of Education and move on with my life -
ironically to Rwanda to be a teacher,
but I was willing to do most anything to get to Africa.

So today we sit and my wide-eyes tell her the passion and truth behind my story of realizing, only while I was in Africa, that I had a black doll growing up. Addy, the American girl doll, was a Christmas present I'd asked Santa for as a child. I guess I'd always known that she was a black doll, but it was only recently that I realized

I had a black doll growing up.
A black doll,
one that I had asked for.

and while I like to believe that our society is moving in the direction of interracial child/doll relationships, I found my 12 year old self to be a bit ahead of the curve & just as that was standing out in my mind as rather peculiar, I fast forwarded the clock 10 years to my 22 year old self and reflected on my time in Rwanda only to feel both excited and puzzled and calmed all at the same time.

I went to Africa
my best friend there
was a beautiful, black 10 year old little girl.
her name is Adeline.

Adeline,
Addy.

& I felt the dots of the universe connecting in my heart, as if some map of stars across the night sky was all of the sudden showing me - in reverse - just how things has played out to bring me to exactly where I am today.

while I know that in less than 48 hours, I will be establishing a new home for myself
in a very different world,
when I close my eyes & dream of things to be,
I am not in Anchorage, Alaska.
I see myself at a community center
once again surrounded by Mamas dressed head to toe in wax print
where the Earth is red & the banana trees are constantly reproducing their fruit.
where English is not the spoken language
& where children run around with dust of play on their soft cheeks.

I am not quite sure yet what exactly my roll is there
am I helping to identify strong leaders within the village to mobilize the community towards change?
am I a part of a team to start a school just for girls, a well equipped school with facilities that will allow girls to deal with menstruation as to avoid them missing a week of studies each month?
am I working with other women to educate families about the Value of keeping their daughters in school rather than pushing them into marriages while years of childhood remain?

I'll figure out the details as they come
& connect the dots as they go.
I'm excited.