Limbo

One month left until COS.  Twenty-seven days until I leave Gihara for good.  I’m sitting indoors right now and rain is lashing at the windows.  It’s been raining in brief spurts, not enough to fill the rain tankards but enough to trick the villagers into planting beans that won’t have the water they need to grow.  On Monday it rained hard enough for me to fill a bucket with runoff from the convent roof – I expected everyone else to be as excited as I was, but instead I got chastised for standing outside with my bucket and getting soaked. “You’ll get malaria,” someone yelled across the courtyard. No, I thought, for the millionth time, you get malaria from mosquitoes. Not from standing in the rain.

In one month, I’m leaving.  Really, truly leaving.  I haven’t fully accepted this as fact.  My village hasn't accepted it at all.  When I tell people they say, “Oh good, when will you be back?” They think America is a place you can visit for a weekend.  When I say I’m not coming back, they think I’m being facetious. 

There are a handful of people who understand. My best friend at site, Louise, understands and I know it because it’s all we ever talk about now.  Every time she sees me she greets me with, “How are you, Gelsey? I will cry when you go to America.” I’ve told her I’ll cry too, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to her whether I’ll cry or not.  Either way, I’m going.

I don’t know how to feel above leaving.  Caught between excitement about the future and affection for the place I’m leaving, I spend most of my time feeling neither sad nor happy.  Instead I’m just exhausted.  The urge to check out completely is overwhelming.  But day by day, I’m saying my goodbyes, wrapping up my projects, and doing my best to end this thing right.

And who knows?  Maybe I’ll come back to Rwanda some day.  Just not as a Peace Corps Volunteer.