The Send-On

“Ah, but Sister Kate, we are not sending you off, we are sending you on to America so you can come back to us.”  Those were the words spoken to me as I left Bafut, Cameroon in November 2007 after serving there as a Peace Corps Health Volunteer for two years. How prophetic.  This Friday I am doing just that—I am returning to Cameroon.  I have spent the last 2.5 years taking classes for a doctoral degree in public health nutrition at Loma Linda University.  Last January I started the process of writing and submitting a grant to the Nestlé Foundation to develop and test an audio program to promote exclusive breastfeeding in Cameroon.  At the end of October the grant was accepted and two weeks ago the subject was officially accepted as my doctoral research topic.  The grant is for 18 months and I plan to return to the US in June of 2012.  While there I will be working with Dr. Okwen, my supervisor from my days as a Peace Corps Volunteer and other Cameroonian researchers and health workers in the Kumbo Health District.  Kumbo is in the same region as where I worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer, but a different city.  It is a much larger city, but further from Bamenda, the regional capitol and transportation center.  

When I left Cameroon in 2007 it was my goal to be able to return and do research.  To follow the Cameroonians advice to be sent on to America only to return later.  Little did I know how much that would actually entail.  The past few weeks I have felt overwhelmed with all that needs to be done in the next 18 months and my responsibilities.  Unlike the last time I left, it is not the unknown that I fear, but the known.  I know what it is like to live in Cameroon and the spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical strength it requires.  Over the weekend I was plagued with the fear that all of it will be too much.  Doing research is hard.  Living in Cameroon is hard.  Doing research AND living in Cameroon seems unbearable.  But on Sunday I attended the symphony and while I watching the musicians it occurred to me that they were using their mind, body, and soul to make music.  And the music flowed by following a rhythm.  Yes, it is a lot to complete in 18 months, but I believe that once I find my rhythm and engage my mind, body, and soul, that has been cultivated the last 2.5 years in America, the music will flow in Cameroon.

But above all, we must learn our own weakness in order to awaken to a new order of action and of being-and experience God Himself accomplishing in us the things we find impossible.

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity.  Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Thomas Merton