This afternoon I found myself sitting on the floor of our small kitchen at the base of the stove. My legs were splayed out creating a tripping hazard for my roommate, who was busy cooking rice, when she turned to grab a clean bowl from the next room by the sink. Between my legs was a mortal and I was rhythmically pounding the whole cloves into a ground powder with the carved wooden pestle. In the background between poundings I was absently listening to the bantering conversation between my language helper and roommate in the local language. Outside a distant mosque was beginning the noon call to prayer. Shortly here after the other mosques will pick up the call in an echoing surround sound, until the one closest to our house will finish with a satisfied click of the megaphone. My eyes are opened wide but glazed over; my mouth slightly agape. I have been pounding these cloves for the last five minutes and they are now quite a fine powder.
How did I find myself here in this state?
Well, it started about 4 months ago, when I boarded a plane at 8pm to fly to Eastern Africa. Since coming to this country I have experienced exhaustion in new ways. New and wonderful ways!
When a person says they are exhausted, I think first physically. They just worked out at the gym or they have been doing physical labor. Or maybe they didn't sleep well last night and are sleep-deprived-exhausted. As a recent college graduate, I am very familiar with sleep deprovisions. In high school, I was an athlete and am pretty familiar with the physical soreness and tiredness that comes with intense exercising. Planning to live overseas, I was told that it can be exhausting, and while I never doubted their words, the depth of tiredness never ceases to surprise me.
When I first arrived in the country I had been mostly awake for the last 48 hours, except for a restless hour or so over the Atlantic ocean and another short rest flying south from Europe. This was another occasion in which I found myself sitting in a room full of conversation with glazed eyes. That time though I was sitting on the mattress that we use instead of couches or chairs in our living room, surrounded by members of my new team. They were chatting about life, what they had done over winter break and what they were looking forward to with the resumption of the spring semester. Every so often someone would ask me about my travel and what I thought of the country so far. My answers were a bit slow and the words kind of tripped over each other. I would quickly learn that when in states of mental exhaustion, I become very ineloquent.
Thank goodness, I adjusted to the time zone quickly and my struggle with jet lag was fairly short. The next kind of tiredness I encountered would come from adjusting to the heat. I had flown from a land in the middle of a freezing, snowy winter to a land that defined winter as the time of year with temperatures in the low 80s, maybe even upper 70s. It took some adjusting and the first week I found myself falling into bed at night and sleeping like the dead. Even a month in I would begin looking at my clock around 7:30pm trying to figure out if it was too early to go to bed. I am daily amazed at how tired you can become from just sitting on the porch. I have slowly adjusted to the heat. Except for the fact that the heat has slowly increased so it is a bit of a constantly moving target!
Then of course, you have mental exhaustion that comes with living continually in a place where everyone speaks a different language from yourself. I noticed this first flying through the French airport. My four years of Spanish gives me a basis for Romance languages and I have studied French informally on and off for the last few years. My brain was constantly attempting to decipher any language I heard and create sense out of it. Similarly here, when I first arrived, my brain was constantly searching for meaning even though I knew absolutely nothing of this language. Initially I couldn't even distinguish names from other words. And because I am obviously foreign, everyone would come up to me and begin speaking rapidly in French, which was less than helpful. The only way this tiredness will go away is through language learning, which in and of itself is a mountainous task.
I have language study four times a week. After three hours of language study I may not be physically tired, but my brain is definitely reaching its capacity. I could describe it in a couple of different ways: my brain is mush, it is leaking out my ears, nothing else can fit in my brain, my brain has exploded… The list could go on. I love studying language, but it is very exhausting. The majority of the three hours is spent in the local language, except brief instructions or directions when I am not able to explain to my language helper with just gestures or pictures. Initially I was just watching and pointing to the correct pictures or toys when I heard the words describing it. I learned 300 words in just over a month. After the first week of lessons, it was not uncommon for my roommate to find me asleep in the living room surrounded by cards and papers. I would fall asleep attempting to plan the lesson for the next day.
The next step was to begin speaking. The first few meetings I couldn't even finish the three hours. We would break in the middle and play a few games of Uno in silence, allowing my brain a chance to rest without having to struggle to try to communicate in this new language. And even then, I would call it quits about 15 minutes early, after struggling greatly to make it that far.
The lesson that finished shortly before the opening story involved practicing days of the week and telling time; sentences describing people cooking, playing, living, and other related verbs; counting money up to a million; talking about emotions; expressing a desire for something; buying things from the market; and an adjective review used to describe different kinds of books. I had even managed to describe activities I did in the afternoon through a combination of the local language, English, gestures, and sound effects. It was my first instance of 'successful' communication for the sake of communicating outside of planning lessons and topics.
My brain held out long enough for me to clean up all the props and cards for language and go into the kitchen to ask how I could help with preparing lunch. By the time I sat on the floor to pound the clove, my brain had decided it was full and shut off. I can usually function fine in such a state as long as you don't ask me to think. For example, the question of what are you eating for lunch will completely push me over the edge to incomprehension and confusion.
When I get really tired, my brain will start slowing down. It will grasp for any words. My English becomes jumbled. I will put any word into the slot that sounds similar in the local language. Once I said "grandfather" instead of "camel" only because the two words start with the same sounds. To be extra helpful, sometimes my brain will try to use words recalled from my high school Spanish instead of their equivalent in the local language. I have never remembered as much of my high school Spanish as I do now. This is especially inconvenient if I have to go to the dukaan, or store, after lesson to buy food or drinking water.
Sometimes after lessons, this mental exhaustion is a satisfying feeling, knowing that I am learning and working hard. Other times, I struggle because, while my brain is throbbing, my body is full of energy and thinks we need to keep going. Some days, I will go work out with my roommate in the evening or I will throw myself into some chore around the house until my body is as tired as my brain. Then I can match my mental fatigue with physical exhaustion.
There are a few other forms of exhaustion I could mention. For example, there is the tiredness that comes from carrying clean water from the store back to your home on the second floor. There is the wearying feeling of waking up at 3:30 when the local mosque calls its followers to prayer first thing in the morning after sleeping on the roof. The heavy-headedness at 10:30pm riding the bus home from class when a breeze flows through the open window. The depleted feeling when you have had the runs for the third day in a row after eating something that does not agree with your stomach. The confusion and questioning after having a conversation with a local friend about cultural aspects that you don't yet understand.
The most important thing that I have learned in the few months that I have been on the field is that you have to learn how to live here well. If you want to stay for any period of time and not burn out, you have to do more than survive. To paraphrase a team member, along with learning the language, the culture, the team, your role in the ministry, you have to learn how to live. That means learning and creating space for rest. Exhaustion will happen, no matter where you live or what you do for a living, but have you been intentional about creating space for rejuvenation? For refreshing and refocusing?