too little time

Not too little time left here... Well, that too. But too little time to blog. I have all these great things to write about. But no time. So I'll make a list, and I'll get to them sooner or later.

- Moto accidents (not me, thankfully, and she's alright, even more thankfully)
- Music on the bus
- Market seamstress
- Friends I've made (maybe with pictures)

And something else I bet I forgot. Maybe I'll wait til I get back to Canada (I leave in 5 days, pretty much. Eek).

in which i decide that coming home will be okay

By this time next week, I will have my feet firmly on Canadian soil. I can't even begin to believe that my time in Rwanda is coming to an end... but I've resigned myself to going back home. To see the people I love, the people I'm coming home for. To eat good food. To shower, in hot water, every day. I hate when people write about gratitude and things like that after they've been to Africa... but I will take a couple more minutes out of my day to be glad that I (well my parents', actually) have a nice house, plenty of food, clean water coming out of the tap. And people I love around me, all the time.

But God... back to *Canada*? In February? Am I completely f***ing crazy???

Rwanda is you and me

Intern love. What would I have done without you guys?

The things they carry

On backs:
- Babies, from the teeny newborns nestled in tightly to toddlers big enough to trot unsteadily on their own two legs struggling to escape. Tiny feet sticking out over mothers' hips, toes wiggling.

On heads (cushioned with a banana leaf ring):
- Baskets of produce, off to the market
- Huge 100 kilograms bags of rice, flour, wheat
- Branches of huge green bananas
- Jerrycans of milk, water, or petrol
- One sneaker
- Suitcases, backpacks and briefcases, or whatever has been fashioned to stand in for those
- Stacks of cds
- A radio (blaring)
- PVC piping or planks of wood, emerging four feet to the front and back
- Hoes, shovels and saws
- A refridgerator (running up a hill...)
- An upside-down dining room table, with the four matching chairs balanced on top

On trucks:
- 25-high stacks of Rwanda Foam mattresses
- Goats and cows, tails tied to the frame
- More humans than you would think could fit

On bicycles:
- Anything you'd carry on your head
- Crates of soda and beer (stacks up to 5 high)
- Live goats, tied firmly in place
- Passengers (men straddling, women side-saddle, babies in between rider and driver)
- Rolled-up mattresses, stacks of bedding
- 3 foot tall silver cans of milk
- Yellow plastic jerrycans tied onto the sides
- Any combination of any of the above

We lack beasts of burden here. People overwhelmingly use their bodies, instead.

Ndatashye icyumweru gitaha

I worry sometimes about the pieces of me that I’m leaving behind here. Rwanda and Rwandans have taken up such large parts of my heart and my mind and I worry about leaving so much of myself behind when I have no guarantee I’ll be back. Everyone is always asking me why I’m not staying, why I have to go, when will I be back? I’ve gotten good at getting ready to say goodbye in Kinyarwanda: Nzasubirayo muri Canada, nta bwo nasigara hano, ndagukumbuye cyane.

I remember reading somewhere before I left that your sense of smell is the strongest holder of memories, and when I left I made sure I had things from home that would remind me of what I’d left behind. Those things have long lost the scent that they arrived with, and now it’s new smells that grab my mind and hold me for a minute. The smell of burning charcoal wafting in the early evening breeze makes me feel secure, because it smells like home. I brought photos with me, which make my plain white walls seem a little less bare, because I wanted to see the faces of people I love every day. Now I am paranoid of what I will forget here if I don’t take pictures (and since my camera is officially broken, that’s getting harder and harder). I was in a panic on the bus into town yesterday, thinking I might forget how things look. Not just the events I’ve attended, the places I’ve been, the people I’ve seen, but Kigali as Kigali. As my home. You get so used to the scenery it stops being remarkable and now I’m frantic to memorize every detail, every mud puddle, every cobblestone road, every faded billboard, every blade of grass. What if I forget? It’s so stupid but I’ve started taking pictures in my head everywhere I go. Luckily I’ve still almost two weeks, so I’m not yet at the point where I have started saying “this is the last time I’ll ….” Or “this is my last Tuesday in Kigali!” I imagine that’ll start on Sunday, which will of course be my last Sunday in Rwanda.

This is the week the goodbyes are starting, though. One of my fellow interns is on a flight out of Kigali on Thursday afternoon, and another heads for a weeklong vacation in Ethiopia before joining us again on the long journey home. I've started making lists of the people I need to say goodbye to. Twelve days doesn't seem like long enough to pack up my life, to have one last Fanta in a dusty bar, to figure out how to let go of these people and this place.

It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you...

23 days.

I'm not even remotely ready for this. I had to physically remove myself from my laptop the other morning to avoid applying for a 12-month position here in Kigali. I know I need to go 'home'. The problem is that I am home.

When my flight to Kilimanjaro just before Christmas took off, I felt this overwhelming, heady sense of relief. Because I knew I'd be coming back. I am not at all ready to be on the flight that takes me away from here, maybe forever.

Africa gets into your system. Rwanda is in my bloodstream, pumping through my veins, in the air I breathe. I just keep thinking, why would you ever want to live there when you can live here? I didn't realise this was going to hurt so much.