How I Visited Pennsylvania

You can build you're entire life around a global nomad identity and still not have all the answers. I'm still asking myself, can you prepare to go overseas? You can't prepare to be a global nomad. That you just have to deal with because it will hit you like a Pakistani lorry when you actually are one. If you chose to be a global nomad, you aren't a global nomad because you can't predict it and global nomad implies a sense of...well...hmm...confusion? But can you prepare to leave one place for another? Technically, this is one of my easier transitions. I've finished college. My family returned homes in Sudan. My sister is in uni. It's time for the new. But can you prepare to go overseas?

I'm in Akron Pennsylvainia for training for my life and position overseas. I sit through meetings, I meet other people going overseas, and my eyes glaze over with something between fear and exhaustion. We talk about peace and service, and organization leadership, who does what job, and how we're all going to make the world a better place. We're all wrapping up loose ends back home. We're supposedly preparing to go overseas. But do two weeks of meetings prepare you for life overseas, or do they just give you questions to ponder?

I don't know if you can prepare to go overseas. You can read. You can get shots. You can buy Keens and pack a years worth of make-up and migraine meds. You can look at google maps. You can talk to people. You can even visit Pennsylvania. But nothing will ever take away that overwhelming, numbing, joy mixed with confusion during the over-stimulation panic you feel when you finally walk off the plane into a typically very ugly and concrete airport. You can't predict that. You'll have no framework to hold the information which you'll encounter so you'll have to build one, perhaps using tools from former lives but no two frameworks will ever be identical. I've given up on expections because no matter what I expect, I never expect the right thing. I've tried over and over again and after scientifically concluding I'm horrific with predictions, I decided I'll just wing it.

I'm not prepared. I can't be prepared. I've gone to uni and have peacebuilding tools. I've lived overseas and have global nomad tools. I've said my goodbyes to the people I love most and still wish they weren't so far away. I even visited Pennsylvania! What more can I do? That's why...I'm...just...going...off the diving board...

How to Justify Visiting Baltimore

This week I went to Baltimore. I have no fondness for Baltimore. In fact, BWI has a history of disturbing me, one of the few places in America where I actually feel like a minority and where I could likely get a fix of anything at multiple street corners. But I overcame my rational distaste and went down to Catholic Relief Services to join up with an ecumenical delegation of bishops from Sudan. My connection? Well, most global nomads will recognize that anywhere outside the West, family is central. Not just your family, but you're whole clan. And because the entire delegation knows most of my family, I was very welcome.

The delegation is touring DC, BWI and NYC promoting peace and policy awareness before 9 January 2011 when Southern Sudan will formally have a referendum and secede from Sudan, becoming their own sovereign state. Northern Sudan has oppressed, explored, repressed and warred with the South almost continuously from 1956 to 2005 when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, essentially a ceasefire which granted the South the right to hold a referendum in 2011 to stay united or separate. Scarcely 90 days from now, and without a doubt in any one's mind that separation is a foregone conclusion, everyone worries...will it be peaceful? Or is this a return to war?

The bishops are touring the East Coast promoting peace with the US Government, the Catholic Church, and the United Nations Security Council. The church is the only remaining structures in Southern Sudan that didn't collapse during the war as well as the only institution that wasn't enveloped in the Islamization of the North. As a result, it's moral authority and credibility are well established. Africa is a religious and a holistic continent. People don't separate church and state, and the church is seen as a place for education, health services, and spiritual guidance as well as a champion for peace and justice. The Sudan Ecumenical Forum is vocal and active promoting a peaceful succession because...everyone knows that Southerners want independence. And yet, what will happen to the Christians left in the North after the split who are doomed for persecution?

And so we discuss policy options, and seneros for the vote, and even if the vote will happen on time. Who will react and how. Will Southerners be relocated back from the North? What will happen to the oil? What about the three disputed boarder territories? What about border demarkation? There are millions of details outside the church and the humanitarian world's control that have to be decided. Yet the sole thing the bishops requested from the US Catholic Church? Prayer; prayer that Southern Sudan's oppression will finally come with the referendum, and that it will come peacefully.

It was worth enduring the Baltimore creepiness and the short flights down from Upstate New York because this is peacebuilding on a massive scale. These are champions of peace, justice, and even joy, and finally, on January 9, 2011 several million people will declare their desire for a new nation state.

Bishop Daniel made a statement in a meeting that resounded with me. He said that his people don't have the luxury of hopelessness. These are their lives, their futures and they are moving forward with hope because they need hope to survive. Such courage from the fearless leader of the Northern Sudanese Catholic Church...and I worry that being a global nomad is an affliction. If he can have hope, then all of us should.

How I Officially Became a Global Nomad

As I reflect back on my global nomadic life, one moment stands. In some ways, it all came down to this. It was a cold February day. There was snow coming down in sheets. I was in Virginia, wrapped in a Columbia Parka and carrying my green book bag (which incidentally expresses some political opinions).

It was graduation checklist. You checked your name, your major, and your hometown for the commencement's program in May. That's when I told the admin people I wanted my hometown left blank. They were very compliant, a little amused, and it was settled. I didn't think it would be hard. It was a deliberate choice I had carefully spent months considering. Yet walking out of that hall back into the snow, I completely broke down. I walked back to my house unable to stop crying. I walked past my housemates to my room, sat on the floor, and just kept crying. I didn't even know why, but I thought of Shawnee, Spartanburg, Rochester, Medford, Shantou, Nairobi, Limuru, Addia Ababa, Harare, Lusaka, Paris, Islamabad, Bath, Harrisonburg, Washington DC...

It's hard not knowing where you're from. There isn't one place on earth that claims me. I know I'm deeply loved by people in many places, but I don't have a home. I've gone back and forth over the course my higher education, struggling to find an answer...and I didn't. I'm a global nomad. The act of telling the world at that symbolic event that I don't have a home was unexpectedly painful and surprisingly healing.

I kept comparing graduation to my idea of a wedding. I don't know if I'll ever get married, and I don't really care, and that's not really the point either. But I marched my way through 15 years of education, 14 different homes and some very bad classes to come out the proudest owner of a Bachelor's degree, with high honors. May 2, 2010 was my glory day, ugly cap and gown aside. It's my most impressive achievement, and to the world, on that day, I said, I'm a global nomad.

I'm a global nomad. On May 2, 2010 I confessed that to the world and I confess it still. I don't know where I'm coming from and honestly, I don't know where I'm going. (I'm going to Cambodia next but that's not the point either.) Instead, I live this truth that I discovered and wholeheartedly believe....that happiness, joy and peace and be found anywhere.