I am not a very gregarious person.
I have many acquaintances, I am on friendly terms with everyone I know, but I
have very few close intimate friends. This is a direct result of my
personality. At times, I can be anti-social and often takes me a long time to
feel comfortable opening up to people I don’t know. It is not a coincidence,
that my closest friends are people I have known for many many years. With all
of this said however, one of my friendship and connection happened to be with
two people that I spent a mere six months with several years ago, and since
then we have a hung out a mere two times.
Yet, the profoundness and depth of our relationship (at least from my
perspective) has been rarely matched.
When I had first set out for
Tanzania I had little international travelling experience. I say ‘little’ only
to be factually correct, though I think it would be more accurate to say I had
no experience. The little experience I
had of leaving my homeland involved a cruise trip with my family to the Bahamas
and a one-week church youth mission’s trip to Toronto, Canada. This was the
extent of my international travels before I decided to go by myself to live in
Tanzania, Africa for six months not knowing a soul in Tanzania, or in all of Africa
for that matter.
Physically, I was 23 years old, in
good health, and I was up for the challenge. Spiritually, I felt this where God
wanted me and I was in a good place. Mentally and emotionally, I was as
ill-prepared as it is possible for someone to be.
I arrived
in Tanzania and met all of my fellow missionaries who had also decided to
dedicate 6-months, a year or two years of their lives to teaching middle school
and high school in poor villages. As I was introducing myself to this group of
9 young men and women it hit me; I thought to myself “What kind of weird person
(myself included) would just leave whatever they were doing in America to come
work for free in Africa?” At this
moment, I immediately decided that I could not be friends with any of these
people because they were either: A) religious fanatics who one could not have a
real conversation with because they were too busy meditating on God, talking
about God or praying to God or B) mentally unstable.
The small
group of us went through training together.
Training for Village Schools International (VSI) is intense and
extremely stressful. It is fascinating to see how people react to stressful
situations and few things in my life have ever matched the stress level of
VSI’s training program. Being introduced to a brand new culture, being
surrounded by a an unfamiliar language, suffering from a lack of sleep, and
having a bad case of homesickness, all adds up to an amalgam of frustration
causing oneself to second-guess life decisions that have led you to this point.
Some people in the group responded with tears, some anger most remained
positive despite the hardships (lending further credence that they were in fact
emotionally unstable as hypothesized in the previous paragraph). As for myself,
I responded to this stressful situation by retreating into quiet thoughtfulness
and contemplation (very close to but not akin to brooding) about how I ended up
here. And then there were David and Rachel…
One of the
things that scared me the most about going to Africa was I had to leave my then
girlfriend (now wife) Emily. We had grown up going to the same church; friends
since middle school, boyfriend and girlfriend since high school, and virtually inseparable
since college. Our lives had become so intertwined that it was to the point
that I did not know how to function in the world without her. This was actually
an argument I told myself for leaving, that I’ve become too reliant on her and
this would be a good experience to show and practice self-reliance… stupid.
Anyway, through training Emily was
often (okay fine, always) on the front of my mind. And then there were Mr. and
Mrs. David and Rachel Bryant. David and Rachel who were so damn in love and
affectionate with one another you would have thought this was their honeymoon.
And I resented the hell out of them.
Every time I looked at them it reminded me of Emily, or more
specifically it reminded me of what I was missing. And like one who has always enjoyed
masochism, I found myself spending more and more time with them. And the more time I spent with them the more
I realized they were my exactly what I needed. Where I was homesick, insecure
and lonely, not only did David and Rachel have each other, but also they were
both well-travelled having lived in both Europe and America at different points
in their lives. And where I was just trying to survive from one day to the
next, they were setting up a home and preparing to make Africa their home.
Soon, though they were only a few years older than myself, I had forced them to
become my surrogate parents while in Africa.
I spent many nights at their house, eating dinner, talking about our
pasts, and (most enjoyably) watching episodes of The Office on their laptop. We did not have a lot in common, but by
(my) necessity we became the closest of friends. I felt alone and scared and
homesick and they took me in and for a least a couple hours a day when I was at
their house, I was in a home. And even if it wasn’t my home, it was enough to get me through.
Friendships originate for a variety
of reasons. Some originate from common life histories, some originate from
common experiences, some originate from convenience, and some originate from
necessity. David and Rachel didn’t need me, but I needed them. And therefore, I
clung to them with emotional attachment the like of which I had never clung to
anyone else. I clung to them like a boy who is lost in a city, strangers
everywhere, and then he sees his mother and runs to her and clutches her leg
tight, not letting the grip go even for a second for fear of being swept away.
David and Rachel were my anchor to sanity, to normalcy, to home, and because of
that we now have a bond that is eternal, even if we never see each other again.
Since returning from Africa I’ve had
the opportunity to see David and Rachel two times. The first time was at my and
Emily’s wedding. The second time was in Hawaii, as we both happened to be
vacationing there over the same week.
Both times we hung out there was something missing. I was married and I
had my wife, and I had my home, I no longer needed them. However, we talked and hung out and it was
like hanging out with family. Even
though, the situation has changed and I no longer needed them, the bond that we
shared was still there. A bond forged through trials and necessity is a bond
that is not easily broken. I haven’t
seen or talked to David and Rachel in years, yet I still consider them some of
my closest friends, and this will always remain true.
-Matt
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