So plane rolls into the airport, I pass through customs, passport stamped, and I walk out and I am immediately assaulted by a hoard of taxi drivers eager for my business. I take a deep breath in, my shirt already sticking to my back in the sticky humidity that follows a rain. I'm back.
It was startling how foreign a lot of the sights, sounds, and smells had already become having only been gone for three months. But believe it our not, this place that I had called home already felt a little like a foreign country all over again. Luckily the adjustment is a lot quicker the second time around. Your local language comes back now that its being shouted at you from all directions again. You quickly remember what it feels like to constantly be sweating. And this time you don't have to deal with the troubling thoughts of, "oh no, I signed up to do this for how long?"
I have a few days in the capital at the start of my trip so I meet up with old friends to say good bye. Volunteers who I probably won't get a chance to see for a few years, members of the bureau who I might never see again, and friends from village who live in the capital during the summer months. Its all a bit overwhelming and yet calming. Your friends' excitement over seeing you returned to your country of service cements the reality of the life that you created over the two years of service. An affirmation of what you meant to people, and a reminder of what these people meant to you. You sit there responding to eager questions about your health, your time in the states, your family, and it really settles in how different you are for having had the foolhardy hope of changing the world.
I had the chance to meet the family of my good friend and professional counterpart Paulin Bamogo, I was able to have dinner and again meet the family of one bureau member, Aicha Pitroipa, with whom I had worked closely on both of my grant projects and who blew me away day after day with her passion for her work and her willingness to learn from anybody.
I made plans to meet up with some volunteer friends of mine for the 4th of July in a village near mine and geared up to make the eventual return to Kogho. I had no idea what to expect upon my return to village and I was both nervous and excited. Life moves slowly in Burkina, but change can happen quickly. A village is like a living breathing entity in the north near the Sahel. The homes are built from clay and wear away steadily with each passing rain or windstorm. Homes are raised in a matter of days and can fall in a matter of years allowing the village to grow and shrink steadily like the pulsating of a large heart. Friends come and go as work becomes available. You might leave for a few months to find maybe your favourite student has moved to a different relative's home in a city on the other side of the country, your best friend left to Senegal to mine gold or Cote D'Ivoire to harvest Cacoa, or your favourite Tauntie has moved to a bigger city to sell her wares and charm to a larger market. In a village where personal possessions carry so little meaning it is easy to uproot your entire life and move on upon a whim and that a certain amount of unknown in my return to Kogho.
The other half of the unknown were the projects that the village and I had been so dutifully working. What would they look like after three months without me? A three months where the village knew I was done forever. A three months that came about three months too early and without warning. All of my carefully laid plans, all of the hard work. Well as I learned time and time again at the hands of an unforgiving Burkina, plans have little substance and serve more to give peace of mind than to offer any meaningful structure in an unpredictable life.
Well for this post I shall leave you here. My return to village was affirming and overwhelming and surprising not because of any specific thing that I had done but because of what those close to me had done and I feel that each of their accomplishments deserves its own post. I want to be able to take my time on these posts and try to work them to one single conclusion as I close out this blog. So here is what I propose. I will take my time, George R.R. Martin style, and put together a three part post documenting what I found in my return to Kogho and closing with my take away message from my service. And that shall be it. As I have noted before I have a wonderfully sporadic posting style which I am sure you, my dedicated readers, have probably loved. But with this final posting I will make sure that the three posts come out in a scheduled manner. Building suspense through expectation and all of that.
So until I find enough time to actually sit down, drink a litre of coffee, and ride to battle Balzac style to achieve three consecutive and coherent posts, my dedicated readers.
“This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensuing to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of with start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.”
-Honoré de Balzac
