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.