It’s been said a million times, and it will be said a million more: time is a very strange thing. For something can supposedly be measured consistently, the pace of time seems to change by the hour. They say “time is a thief” and “comparison is the thief of joy.” So comparisons of time are bound to be no good. But who can help themselves when we reach milestones? How can we resist thinking of where we were a year ago — or how two years ago so much more seemed to have happened, than this year. Or this month or week or day was so busy, I hardly knew it happened. 

Today marks two weeks at site. An occasion to be marked? Or a date to nod at as I walk by?

I’m intrigued by all the ways we perceive time. How we remember a time; how we remember the movement of time. The meanings we ascribe to time. When I sit and think too long about it, I feel like my brain has melted into a big old  Time Soup. Perhaps not a soup. Sometimes time is so quick and then and other times I’m stuck in a chewy rich chunk of it. A time ragout, perhaps. 

Yesterday, I was trying to remember what week two of training had been like. How did I feel? What did I think? I can’t remember. I could “look back” and read my diary. But it feels too early to time travel.

Two weeks. 

My first trip abroad in high school was just under two weeks. We packed in Giverny, a home stay in Normandy, the D-Day beaches and memorials, Loire Valley castles, and Paris. Last summer I could have been in three different countries over the course of two weeks as I skipped around Europe. In July, I spent two weeks here for my site visit — it felt like a transformational and intense time.

Two weeks. 

So far at site, I’ve taken many walks. I’ve had one 100% great day. And quite a few days at a good 80%. I’ve had four language lessons. I’ve finished a couple of books. I’ve willed the rain to come and willed it to stop. (The rain did as the rain wished). I’ve picked through a lot of beans. I’ve watched the masons make steady progress on the construction of a hospital next door. Ten tons of cement to steadily work through. Twice, I’ve sat under the big shady trees between my yard and my neighbors’ yard — and counted both as a social success. Looking back over two weeks it can sometimes feel that very little has “happened”. But I’ve filled up dozens of pages in my diary. Each day there’s plenty to say, even if there’s not much to say at the end of two weeks. 

Two weeks here. Three months in Togo. 

I am now just over three months into being in Togo. During my gap year in Senegal, three months was just shy of half-way. I think I felt like I was beginning to have a hold on things by then. I felt like I knew quite a bit about the folks I was living with. I felt myself changed. I’d seen the seasons change. 

I should verify that with my old journals some day. It is perhaps time to time travel to Senegal, to understand that important year more clearly.  But in my memory of that time, three months was pretty good, pretty on top of things. 

But I was tired from all that observation, adaptation, and growth. I have this memory of time in Senegal. It’s when I started using a 24 hour clock. I would keep checking and checking the time after it got dark. When it was 20h (8:00pm) I felt justified in retreating to my room. Because hey that was only four hours until midnight so I had definitely done a sufficient amount of social interaction — I could be alone again. 

Abby, my closest GCY fellow, lived in a village with a Peace Corps Volunteer. The volunteer was surprised we were in Senegal for only seven months and trying to be so involved. She said, it wasn’t until six-months-in that she had a handle on anything that was happening. 

Numbers numbers numbers. Let’s get back to the ragout.

The odd  and wonderful thing about time is that you feel it. Sometimes I feel it like a light sun burn — high on sunny days, the burn is unnoticeable until I shower and find my skin tender. Sometimes I feel it like a flip flop stuck in a great gob of mud after a night of rain. Sometimes time feels like when I’ve become too meditative while swimming laps and nearly hit my head on the pool wall. 

Those steady regular markers of time — hours, days, years — are what cause us to look up, look around, and ask “where does the time go?” In these marker moments, I slow down and look back to marvel at all the million things that caused the time to move — fast and slow. 

-J