Dirt is my accessory

Kigali by night from our host mother’s house

It’s time to leave Rwanda for now.  A mixture of red earth and children’s snot cake my jeans in the shape of little hands.  Bed bug bites mark my bum in neat little itchy rows.  A chaotic splatter of mosquito bites mark my hands and legs.  All the donations and gifts that filled my suitcase on the way here have been distributed and replaced by gifts for friends and family back home.  The houses below now fade to little dots, but Rwanda, this adventure, has marked my soul.  If someone were to tell me one day that my life was wholly imagined, I will probably believe them.  For every unimaginable journey I’ve made, a tiny bit of guilt lingers that tells me I’ve been too fortunate to see these amazing things and be invited into these distant people’s lives and homes.  “Surely this time will be the last,” I think, but here I am again.  Rwanda will always be the first place I saw my academic studies come to life; my first step into a refugee camp; my first glimpse at a functional repatriation site; my first international conference presentation; my first negotiation with a representative from a foreign government ministry.  Perhaps it is not too much a stretch to say it’s my first taste of being an academic- to really fill the shoes of a doctoral candidate and embrace the possibilities of a future I’d never dared to imagine for myself.  Or maybe that’s romanticizing the process.  It’s hard to internalize what a powerful journey this has been.  No one single moment sticks out in my mind.

Rwanda has disappeared now below the clouds and another adventure of cancelled flights and rerouting through Paris awaits.  I certainly won’t forget the beautiful scenery, the warm and friendly people, the friendships and professional connections that have been made.  It’s hard to believe three weeks is already gone, but the experiences that fill those three weeks are enough to last a lifetime.