Saturday, October 20, 2007

How I ended up in Zimbabwe


How I end up anywhere, is a great question. Most the time I haven’t a clue how I end up in any given situation. I’m like a trailing spouse…without a spouse…but not quite a trailing child. Having graduated high school this past summer (which I am well aware means little or nothing in most cultures), I was accepted to both my college choices. I have decided on Liberty University’s Distance Learning Program. Liberty is in Lynchburg Virginia, one of the largest private Christian liberal arts colleges in the United States. I’m an undergrad freshmen working towards a AA in General Studies which I’ll get without ever having to set foot in a Liberty classroom. School in bed online, pretty sweet deal. The degree will transfer into a four year degree at a residence university so only my first two years will be distance.

But this isn’t about school, this is about how I ended up in Harare Zimbabwe. Part of the agreement with college was that I live at home. That in a nutshell is how I got from Paris to Harare. My dad works with an international humanitarian organization, and the post of country representative in Zimbabwe was vacant and needed instant replacement. Leaving his position in the regional Southern Africa office in Lusaka Zambia, he went over to help. As the trailing family, we followed behind with school books in bag and ready for stories.

And so we are here! I’m in college, my younger siblings homeschooled as ever, and we take group tennis lessons. It’s an interesting way to start one’s university education, but then again, when introducing myself in group discussion boards for classes, I’m always the most exotic.

No comments: