A good friend of mine, Jamali Jack, during a conversation over lunch two years ago when we first came to Taiwan noted, “It is easy to send a man to war but very difficult to get him to go back to war.”
And while I understood what he meant, I fully appreciated the depth of that statement after returning to St. Vincent last June, after 22 months in Taiwan.
As a student of Mass Communication and a writer, I, for obvious reasons, try to avoid cliches. However, I am sure that you will pardon the intermittent use of such in this entry.
They say that you never really fully appreciate what you have until you lose it. And, having lost that thing, if you regain it, you will appreciate it in a way that you had never done before, to the extent that you will do everything possible or necessary to ensure that that desirable entity is never lost again.
On my return to St. Vincent I saw in a new way, almost as if for the first time, several things that were, before my departure to Taiwan, such a part of my everyday life, that to an extent I might have taken them for granted.
These include simple pleasures such as going to the beach, a home-cooked meal, and a conversation with members of my family, as annoying as I might have found them to have been before my departure.
The two and a half months in St. Vincent was also an opportunity to reconnect with my fiancee Symantha; to strengthen the relationship that we have shared during the past eight years.
And it was this that made my departure for Taiwan so difficult: having to drag my body to one place, thousands of miles away from where my heart is.
I cannot fully put into words what I felt that morning, September 1, when I realized that I had to get onto a plane and leave my fiancee, family and all that I love to return to Taiwan. A river of tears offered a respite of sorts.
(St. Vincent’s Harmonites String Band perform in Kingstown)
And while I wanted to spend as much time in St. Vincent as possible (school started on September 10), when I got to New York I was happy that I had decided to spend a week with my aunt and cousins there.
I am really appreciative of my cousin Nyron with whom I share an especial friendship and at whose house I stayed. He was very understanding of what I was experiencing and provided much encouragement. (I really needed the transition.)
(Peruvian Band Wayno performing in Time Sq. New York)
But why am I putting myself through all of this? Why did I not stay in St. Vincent and continue in the relative comfort that I enjoyed before coming to Taiwan?
It is all for an undergraduate degree and the potential benefits of having such and the many lessons that will guide me during the rest of my life.
As cliche as it might sound, I am not the same person that I was when I first came to Taiwan. And I will never be the same.
And it is for this reason that I often pray that God continues to “grant me the patience to endure my blessing”.
For many times God blesses us with something and like a plant, we have to wait for it to mature. Like my pastor said during his sermon on August 31, the day before I departed St. Vincent: “There is not short cut to maturity.”
I will only deceive myself if I were to pretend that, since coming to Taiwan, I have never thought of returning home, without completing what I have started. But what is the sense in that” After all, “nothing good comes easy”. I tell myself that my five years here, is “a necessary evil”. I have three academic years left and I am committed to sticking it out. Others have made it and I can make it too.
I am encouraged by all the inspiring messages from my friends and family and especially my fiancee, Symantha.
Jamali, his wife Jeana and I were lunch guests last Friday of Nicole Su, a Taiwanese diplomatic who had a three-year tour of duty in St. Vincent. In response to a thank-you email I sent her, she said:
“St. Vincent is a wonderful country and I’m happy that I had the chance to stay there for the past three years. And I’m glad that you, Jeana, Jamali, and all the other Vincentians are here to experience the Taiwanese life. Bitter or sweet, I think the opportunity to experience the difference itself is worthy of trying.”
Should I say more?
