next eight months

From last Tuesday

This morning I woke half-covered by my blanket. Instantly too hot, I threw it off and settled underneath my sheet for the last few minutes of sleep. Later, walking to the pit toilet, I contemplated what to wear. The weatherman claimed it would only be 30 C (86 F), I could wear heavier clothes. I laughed. Only 86, my pre-South Africa self would be melting and searching for a fan.
It's been six weeks since I used either a sheet or a blanket and I welcomed the cool morning as an early sign of fall. Ah, fall: those short weeks when it's no longer steaming hot at dusk and dawn, like summer, or freezing at night, like winter. It may be much colder at home right now, but I remember there being leak-proof roofs and windows, insulation and heating.
Fall also means that I'm closer to coming home. My official swearing-in date was October 13, 2005 meaning that my service officially ends on October 13 this year. For unknown reasons, my projected close of service (COS) date is October 6 and there's a rumor that we can COS a month early no-questions-asked. The COS date leaves all of us a few weeks to a month too late for the start of schools, either for teaching or continuing studies.
My back to the United States time-line looks something like this:June 1: earliest date to apply to medical schoolsSometime in June or July: COS conference, where the Peace Corps dispels all myths and fives us the date that we can officially leave this country. PLUS they give us a third of our settling in allowance (the remaining two thirds is sent to our permanent address on record). After the conference, we are back on travel restriction and not permitted to leave our sites. June 30–July 16: Winter school holidays. No set plans, I hope to go to Pretoria for a few days to complete medical school applications and start looking for jobs back in the US. Maybe I'll visit the Kalahari Desert too. . . September 22-October 1: Spring school holidays. I'm not allowed to travel. Sometime in September or October: Fly home! I may stop off and visit other places on my way.
I have four months to complete my application essay, 'Why do you want to be a doctor?' I've had several false starts: writing a page or two and then getting stuck. I have so many pre-Peace Corps experiences I could write about but I can't ignore two years spent in a land struggling with so many health and social issues. It seems fake to write about the country's issues with health when I have little to do with it other than waking to funeral dirges. My experiences here are too fresh and raw; I haven't figured out if there are more positives or negatives to my service, there's not an all-inclusive story when the story's still unfolding and any story I come up with starts with "I want to be a doctor so I can help people." As does anyone else who writes the essay. At that point, I flounder and give up for a couple of weeks.
So far I'm definitely applying to UW-Madison, Dartmouth, Georgetown and Jefferson with George Washington, Temple and Boston on the maybe list. I like aspects of all the schools and the more I research them, the more I realize that I haven't found a school that offers everything I'm looking for. I'm extending the search to Chicago schools this week and then ending my search.
Which brings me back to the present. I'm sitting outside with Orion, Sirius, the Milky Way and Southern Cross stretching over my head. Mma is a few feet away sitting on empty 50 kg mealie meal bags cleaning wash cloths. A dog barks and donkeys move and rattle the bells around their necks. My neighbors are blasting Thobela FM (all Sepedi language all the time), the shebeen (illegal bar) is bopping down the street and another neighbor is competing for the loudest music award. I can hear my host father inside on his cell phone watching the Sepedi news and someone is trying to fix their car. The cool (hopefully summer won't return) air surrounds me and I can smell fresh scones in the air. Good, bad, aggravating; this is Ga-Monyeki village etching itself onto my memory. I look forward to using a blanket tonight.