Snigdha left with emotions to be felt rather than words to be spoken

I know this quote is directed towards Augustus Waters but ….

Dear Cape Town, 

“I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I am grateful.”
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It’s been a little over a month now and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Cape Town. Whether it’s the people I’ve met, the places I’ve gone, or the experiences I’ve had I am constantly thinking about my time there. Being home is exactly how I expected it to be: the same. Nothing has changed. My room, my house, my family, my life all remain exactly how I left.  But I’m not exactly how I left. I don’t know how to describe it but I feel I’ve been put back in an unbreakable bubble.  Like a bubble, I can see through the transparency enough to know that there is so much out in the world to be discovered but I can’t pop the edges. These edges consist of my responsibilities including work, school, and my family.  However, I do like being home because I appreciate my experience in Cape Town so much more. I see things in my tiny suburban town that I probably would not have noticed had I not gone to Cape Town. Like the other day I walked into our local McDonald's and I noticed that I was the only person of color in the restaurant. It’s not like it bothered me or anything—I’ve been used to being the only non-white person in the room my whole life but I just realized that there is meaning in this.  It matters that I’m the only person, and it’s something that I care about now and pay attention to. One of my close friends recently posted an article on Facebook from that Princeton kid who—you know the really messed up article white privilege. Before, I would never have commented on it but this time I commented on the link and tried to explain to my friend what white privilege means. Because these things matter to me now. I just started an internship where I am the only person of color in the office and the warehouse. I am one of 4 women in the office. I guess it’s just shocking to be back in such a homogenous society where in Cape Town my job had me working with people of all different backgrounds. Let me tell you, selling trade show exhibits is nothing like working with refugees. Don’t get me wrong, I love my new internship and the people I work with but it’s hard to watch companies spend $20,000 on an advertisement for one event when I struggled to get refugees approved for a $200 rent payment. 

Being home is depressing. What do you mean I can’t go to the beach whenever I want to? What do you mean I can’t eat out every night? What is this ‘money’ you speak of? Wait, we have grades for the semester? Real life punches you in the face at the worst possible time. That’s the worst part about it. I don’t feel like Cape Town was ‘real life’. I feel like it was a fantasy land because I didn’t have a care in the world. My course load was light, my internship was my passion, and every day I discovered something new. It was because I was doing something new every day that things were exciting and refreshing. Now it’s just awful. But now I’m in a rut. I think in a way I’ve been in a rut for the past 18 years because I always knew what the next day held. In Cape Town I was going to unknown places, meeting people, and trying new foods, so I could never really anticipate how the day would go.  Now that I’m back home I’m watching videos of a South African comedian named Trevor Noah (shout out to Katrina) and it seems like his videos are the closest I’ll ever get to South Africa again. His accents, his imitations, his talk of Checkers and Xhosa women all remind me of my 3 months. When people ask me about Cape Town I don’t respond with anything more than ‘it was amazing’ because when they ask about South Africa they are asking about my life. How do you sum up your life into a couple of words? You don’t. Because you don’t want to have to put it in words. You want it to remain an indescribable experience that left you with emotions to be felt rather than words to be spoken.