The Return

The next day, Sunday, we got up early and went to breakfast that I had missed out on the day before. It was so good but only Kyte and I went.I got a strawberry milkshake and a banana chocolate crepe. That morning proved to be the most beautiful day yet.However, the 3rd world status was still prevalent.This was the restaurant we had eaten at on Friday night.These two kids thought they were all hard core.We went on a relaxing stroll on the beach.People were there playing soccer and it looked like so much fun.More than anything else I wanted to play a long hot game of soccer and then just run and jump into the cool water.Andrew was having such an internal struggle over getting into the water.I have never seen him choose his own wants over others. He was all excited to get into the water but when others didn’t want to he went with what they wanted. It was so nice of him. I had also wanted to get into the water and when people had brought up, a week earlier, that it might be too cold I voiced my opinion that it didn’t matter and that I thought we should still go. A team A typical comment was made in all sarcasm. “Ya, JC, we are going to go all the way to Africa and not get into the water. Honestly” As I sat there looking out into the ocean it began to dawn on me in full force who these people were. Anyways, we still had fun and it was so nice that it made up for it. I wrote my name (Charlie) in the sand and just as I finish a wave came. But you can still see it.Good bye beautiful beach.Every single hotel room had a sticker on the desk like this.How cool!It was at this point, standing in the Airport that I began to realize a lot about what was going on. I realized that I had started to lose some of my identity. I had said and done some stuff that was pretty typical “me” on this trip and people were shocked and surprised. For example, we were eating lunch and a group came up and looked at the restaurant and I yelled out, “It’s delicious! Come eat here!” and everyone was so shocked at me. I noticed that I wasn’t being true to myself here in Europe and was trying too hard to be accepted but something about Africa made that go away and I decided I wanted to go back to being true to myself. I also realized that there were plenty of people that I could hang out with and didn’t have to limit myself to a certain group. And with this determination I left Africa behind.But I was unable to leave behind the consequences.