Departure

I leave tomorrow. I am almost officially done with my program, just a half day of formalities tomorrow. I will spend the next month in Italy, possibly France, with Dan Overholt, my brother (as Rwandese would say). I will not blog for a long while and then suddenly I will arrive back in the states. I will see you all again soon-ish

Photographs and Memories

Suddenly the time has come to leave. It is weird to start thinking about packing and plane tickets when I feel like it was just yesterday that I complained about the winter cold, while looking forward to sporting my Chacos. I've washed my last clothes with Alphonse and the remaining days now number in the low single digits. I guess I do not really know what to say about this whole experience. I find it hard to recall all I've learned; I have no words to wrap this all up nicely. I guess I will be wrestling to remember and organize my experiences here into a coherent whole for a while to come. 

I am worried that I will forget things, especially the oddities of Rwandan life. I guess that explains why I have journaled compulsively everyday and tried to capture life via photographs. It is a fated exercise though; I cannot capture everything in my journal or camera. Even my memory will fade and that scares me. I do not quite know how to take that which I have learned or undergone and transplant it. I think I will try to do the little things first, like hand wash clothes or eat rice and beans more often than not. I guess I do not know where to go from that shaky start.