Loss

It still hasn’t rained.  Some times the clouds will come, looking promising, but all they bring is a hurricane of dust and wind.  It’s dry, everyone is coughing.  If you’re outside at the wrong time, you get blasted by a wall of dust and dirt…kinda makes you want to stay inside.

I wrote this entry last Thursday, but there wasn’t any electricity.  I’ve been putting off posting it.

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9-16-10

The power has been out for the last couple of hours. I went outside to see what was going on, and the mountain nearby was covered in flames, giving the village a funky haze and an orange glow in the night. The people here intentionally burn the mountains. I’ve tried for answers, but never get a straight one. “These ones, they are hooligans,” being the most descriptive explanation thus far. I suspect something more interesting, but that may just be my idle mind grasping at straws. Anyways, this particular fire spread to the power lines and now the village is without electricity for god knows how long. It takes me a minute to realize, but I realize my questions and frustrations regarding the fire are projected from the recent loss of a good friend.

Tom is being buried today back in the States. His life was taken Sept. 3. It’s so strange. In one sense it seems like I found out just yesterday, but at the same time these last two weeks have felt more like two years.  As volunteers, we’re primed to expect death to touch us during our service.  HIV/AIDS takes so many lives.  The loss of a fellow volunteer, though, has blindsided us all.  There are so many questions.

My heart and my head are burnt out from it. In trying to make sense of things, the only answer I’ve come up with is that there really is no answer. The world is a bit more messed up than I thought it was. I don’t want to mope, though, so I’ll just remember him…

Tom was generous, fun-loving, and at times pretty loud. Everyone got along with him because he genuinely wanted everyone to have a good time. He reminded me a lot of my brother. He had great taste in music. We had long talks about our favorite bands. I couldn’t believe he was a big fan of “Pinback”. There was a guitar at the training center, and he showed no hesitation in starting a backyard jam session one of our first nights. He even showed off his skills with the violin. The guy was a machine.

We shared a room together in Philly our last day in the States. I remember waking up at 4:00am to catch our bus after staging. Tom hadn’t slept, but was energized from an apparently awesome night. “Duuude! It was F*cking awesome!” he informed me, inflicting a twang of jealousy given my state sobriety at the moment. I mis-labeled him mentally that morning as a frat-boy party animal. I was half right.

After that, Tom and I shared a room during training. There was four of us, and our heads would hit our pillows exhausted from our rapid-fire training sessions. There would be a minute or two of silence before Tom would ask, “so….who’s the hottest girl in Peace Corps?”. Such conversations would continue for as long as long as our brains had any synapses left to fire…each of us would drift into sleep at our own pace….our slurred words would taper off through our smiles, until one of us was left with the awkward realization that everyone else in the room was asleep. While we were all great sleepers before, I can now say with confidence that each one of us could sleep through a bomb raid. Tom snored like a chain-saw.

During CBT, we were near each other again. We would go on hikes and cook and drink together with other people from the village. I remember one time I happened to be walking by the village store. There was music, which caught my attention. There was a white guy dancing, showing off his super-sweet dance moves to about 10 kids. Of course it was Tom. When we were getting near the end of CBT, it was Tom’s idea to thank the village by organizing a garbage clean-up during our off-time on the weekend. Many of the kids in our village helped, and to this day it remains one of my favorite Peace Corps memories.  We would also go on hikes, exploring the landscape of Lesotho together for the first time.  Early on, Tom and I went together to explore the source of water for the village.  A small stream came from a beautiful canyon between the plateaus.  We climbed rocks until we could continue no further, talking about our life experiences and our hopes and dreams.  We had a lot in common.  He reminded me of my brother.

When we got placed at site, I was excited to know that Tom and I were near each other. His house had electricity, a fridge, running water(hot), a flush toilet, a bathtub, and 4 rooms. He went on to furnish the place with an awesome BBQ pit, a hammock, a spit, and an unfinished chicken coop. The man knew how to set up a place. I remember one weekend he called me out of the blue on a Friday. He convinced me I needed a vacation. He gave me the greatest hospitality, like it was his job to make sure I had the best weekend possible. He took me to the bar, gave me a tour of the village, introduced me to his colleagues, showed me the best coffee and sunrise in Lesotho, found a party to hang out at, cooked up some amazing food, hooked me up with a bubble bath(he insisted there be music), made a camp fire, let me watch some 30 Rock, took me to the largest botanical garden in Lesotho(we snuck in, of course), and made me feel 100% at home the whole time.  Tom was like that.  He always wanted people to have a great time.  That weekend was exactly what I needed.

A great friend has been lost in Tom. I hurt most when I think of his family and friends, the people that I don’t know and I don’t know how to help through this insanely difficult time. I wish all the friends and family of Tom to know that he loved his job, and his love for his work will be carried on through all of the other volunteers that were touched by him. Tom was truly a great person who will forever inspire us all. May his life shine brightly within each of our hearts, always.

Tagged as: loss, tom