September 11

Can it really have been 10 years? Today I was listening to the BBC
World Service and they played back some of their reports from
September 11, 2001. I was surprised to find myself crying as I heard
people wondering in terror if the US was being invaded and the screams
and sound of running feet as another plane hit the second World Trade
Center tower...

In September 2001, I was sixteen years old. We watched the World Trade
Center fall in my U.S. history class and I remember keenly feeling for
the first time that I lived within history too and the story of my
country was not in the "happily ever after" phase that I had assumed
it be. I remember understanding that the world was big and that it
mattered in a way I hadn't understood before.

A lot of things have happened in the past ten years for me. I grew up,
moved away from my family, went to college, went to grad school, got a
job, got married, moved farther away from my family... and so it is
funny to hear those same news reports here in South Sudan with my
husband because I am different... and yet the feelings are not.

I'm with the US in spirit today, even though I'm far away.

-Stephanie