My Year of Yes

It started with a Ferris Wheel. On New Years Day 2016, I finally rode on Seattle’s Great Wheel, one I’d been eyeing for a while as I have a little ongoing love affair with riding them all over the world. It was a perfect bluebird day, brisk outside but heated in the gondola and I remarked to my then-boyfriend, as well as all my Instagram followers, that I thought it was a sign it was going to be a beautiful year.

A month later, I found myself single with a broken heart. Suddenly, the life I had imagined, based on the dreams of two of us, was gone. I’d never really had a true broken heart and for the first time I felt what it was like to have to rebuild yourself. To imagine a new life with different dreams: the dreams of one. But I didn’t know what they were. That lovely ferris wheel ride no longer seemed like an omen of good things to come but rather a cruel joke. 

I let myself suffer through the loneliness and agony for a couple of months until one day I said to myself: “I need something that can be just for me.” Though we’d often talked about sailing together, we’d never done it, and years earlier I had taken some lessons but never pursued it further. Through a series of events, for which almost all of the credit goes to my friend Katherine, I found myself on the Columbia River on a spring Thursday night, racing with one of Portland’s best crews (we’d later earn an award for winning the most races of the year). I was a novice, a stranger and the best I could do was clumsily serve as rail meat. But it turned out the skipper liked me and he said he hoped I would come back. So I did. 

That crisp April evening on the water turned into a summer and fall of racing on two crews twice a week and in one long distance overnight race to St. Helens. I spent a long weekend volunteering at the Oregon Offshore in Vancouver, B.C., where I stayed in an AirBnB with three people I hardly knew who have become some of my dearest friends. I was given the opportunity to lease a Ranger 20 with four other women sailors and I spent the summer out on my boat learning the ins and outs of being a skipper. I had one of the most important summers of my life. 

All this to say, I took a risk and it paid off. Those who know me well know this isn't easy for me. I’m calculated. I plan. Everything I do is well thought out and every angle is considered before I make any decisions. It’s exhausting worrying all the time. But when Katherine gave me a chance to sail, I took it. I didn’t think twice about heading out to the marina and meeting up with a group of strangers (she wasn’t there that night) to pursue this hobby I’d always dreamed about. 

For once, I simply said "why not?" and it followed me through the year. I took woodworking classes and metalworking jewelry classes. I lost weight and chopped off my hair. I made new friends and I made myself uncomfortable. And at the end of the year, I decided I was ready for an adventure. I began looking into taking a sailing trip down under, but instead I reached out to Red Sweater Project, a non profit that runs a school in Tanzania, to which I had previously expressed interest in volunteering. I was told they were hiring for a volunteer communications manager - a position I was well qualified to get. I applied immediately. Before I sent the application, I told myself that in the spirit of my new outlook, if they accepted me, my answer was going to be yes. I would not allow myself to consider it, to hem and haw like I always do. This was my year of yes. And so when they offered me the position a week later, my decision was already made. 

I guess that ride around the wheel was a sign after all. This last ride around the sun was a huge one. So I quit my job of three years, moved out of the house I’d lived in for four and had a goodbye bash with my best friends, as I found myself again in Seattle for New Years. Three days later I stepped off a plane in Tanzania.

I have no idea what I’m getting into. This morning the insufferable roosters woke me up far too early but now I’m enjoying a cup of coffee on the porch of my house - a lovely little abode nestled in the trees in Mto wa Mbu, pronounced Mmm-twom-boo (I think the name of the town itself is a sign. Could it be any closer to Mutombo, the term of endearment my closest friends have come to call each other?) Last night when driving from Arusha to our town, Sheb, my amazing new colleague and friend who works for the school and also as a Safari guide, pulled over quite suddenly. My immediate reaction was a tinge of fear, but then he remarked that he had spotted a family of giraffes in the trees. Suddenly, they leaped across the road in front of us. It was surreal. Just as hundreds of careless deer have done back home in my life in the Northwest, this mama giraffe, or twiga as it’s called in Swahili, was so casually taking her family from point A to point B and we were in her path. 

Today more than 100 students will show up at the Mungere Secondary School to apply for entrance as the incoming year’s newest class. Only 20-30 will be accepted. I will be there to help facilitate and watch what I’ve been assured will be chaos. It will be humbling I know. Many kids won’t get in for reasons I cannot relate to: some won't be able to read; others will be found to be pregnant; many will lie about where they live to try to meet the admission criteria. I’m trying my best to “check my privilege” because over here, it’s apparent in every part of me. But the people are kind and they seem to understand that we come from different worlds but that doesn’t make us strangers. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.  

Despite all the wonderful accomplishments I mentioned, last year was tough. Emotionally it was the hardest year of my life. But every step I took to change my life helped me work through the rejection and loss until I landed in a place where I could breathe again. That beautiful year that started on a magnificent wheel overlooking Elliot Bay turned out to be exactly what I predicted. It was my year of yes. Now I can't wait to see what 2017 will become.