Dear Friend,

I’ve been on the African continent for two weeks and one day, and it is still difficult for me to articulate what is happening to my heart.

The short story is that I feel incredible here, alive, curious, energised and refreshed. My hair is not working out, but other than that, all is well.

I don’t know what it is. My soul is stretching, expanding and growing, like I’m learning something though I do not understand it, eating something tasty though I can’t see the food or singing a song when I don’t know the words or melody. Life is funny and God has an ironic way of making things in my life happen.

I went most of my life thinking that if I could live anywhere, it would be in the United States and if there was one place I would never want to live, that would be Africa. As in the whole continent. Please, God, please. I do not want to go there. I do not want to live there.

After the last three months of travel, this is what my heart said: I do not want to ever live in North America. Ever. I’ll go if you want me to, God, but please, God, please, I do not want to live there. Ever.

And all I can think right now is how much I want to come back to the African continent, how much I think I would love to live here even as I am totally culturally incompatible with this continent and its people. I love this place.

The last time I felt this way was when I spent five weeks in Sri Lanka in 2001. I was only 19 then and lacking the security and grace that is a foundation in my life now. But I knew something was happening to my life then, and I didn’t understand it. It is only today, I think, that I get it a bit more.

The connections I form with a few places is God’s whisper of destiny. It is not understandable in these brief but precious moments, but I know that it is real. One day I will come back to live here.

Love,
Devi