Teaching in Kenya leaves a little welcome baggage

Melissa Bachler, a language arts and history teacher at Crone Middle School in Naperville, recently spent a month in Kenya as a volunteer teacher helping girls with math and reading.

This is her final dispatch about her experiences.

I have been back from Africa for more than a few days now, and it is baffling how much baggage we all carry even after all of our luggage is unpacked.

There are some items that no matter how often you put away and no matter how much you think they're out of your luggage, they're still right where you left them - in your heart and on your mind. You can't unpack a new perspective on life, but you can enjoy carrying it with you wherever you go.

There are little things and there are big things, but one thing is for certain - there are tons of things (and of course, when I go back to teaching, I will teach my students to only use a word once in a sentence).

Lights really did amaze me when I first got back. I was walking at a local festival and it hit me hard that in Kenya a lighted Ferris wheel and an ATM in the middle of a parking lot wouldn't happen. I stopped to wonder what the local families were doing without their Ferris wheels and ATMs. Were they sitting around their tables laughing and starting a candle for a little light in a dark hut?

When I went to go buy groceries, it hit me doubly hard that any choice of fruit or vegetable was mine to be had (in Kabula, limited doesn't begin to describe fruit and vegetable choices) and the cool air coming out of open air refrigerators would've been a welcome whisper in a place where electricity was harder to find than Oreo cookies. I stopped again to wonder what the local families were doing without their cantaloupes and free "air conditioning." Were they eating their bananas and sitting outside with the stars?

Throwing away paper has been, believe it or not, the most heartbreaking piece of carry-on luggage I tote around with myself. To even put a piece in the recycling bin slows my hand to such a speed that I almost think it will stop before it gets there. I stop to wonder what the kids are doing at school without copied work sheets. Are they copying down words from the board into their notebooks because there are no such machines to do the work for them?

And then I realize that yes, they are lighting up dark rooms, eating beneath the stars, and manually copying. We are all going on with life in America with our lights and refrigerators and in Kenya with their candles and limited fruit choices.

And even though we are all still "going on," one thing is for certain - that extra baggage I am carrying with me from Kenya? It's a welcome weight to carry.