My last day in Musanze, we had some debriefing and some good discussion with the IREME team. I fear my emotions started to cloud my ability do be productive anymore, so a lot of it was wrapping up loose ends. There was a lot of crying, and more gift giving, and a fruitless attempt to etch each image around me onto my heart.
We did go into town for some last minute shopping and then had a wonderful dinner as a big team at a rooftop restaurant. I was too in love and emotional to get any good photos, but it was a beautiful moment to celebrate the team we had built.
The next morning, I let my tears flow as we left IREME for Kigali. It is hard to fathom how far away this new family is from me. Yes I can call and see them on Zoom, and I will, but I definitely left a piece of my heart in this beautiful corner of the world.
As we drove back down the mountain, the views that were so new to me just a week earlier felt familiar and comforting. The landscape still left me speechless, but I recognized something in it now.
The temperature and population density both rose as we closed in on Kigali. We ran errands, dropped people off, picked up suitcases and gifts for home, and then spent a full day meeting with new partners. By dinner time, we were hot, hungry and exhausted. We rushed to the airport and, even there, hastily met more people with things to send to family in America.
After a few last security hurdles, forgetting a precious gift in the car and having to procure a police escort to go back outside the airport to retrieve it, and some last frantic hugs, we were finally at the gate. My body was spent and my mind needed quiet, and by this point, all I wanted was to be back in the arms of my husband and children. It was a huge challenge to be apart from them for so long, and that is what every one of my cells craved at that moment. Well, maybe a good long hot shower first.
But as I walked outside to board the plane that would take me home, I looked in the sky to see the moon. I thought to myself, this is your last view of a moon over Africa for a while, and I felt sad to tear myself away.
A few years or even months ago, I would never have imagined I could fall so deeply in love with a little corner of a beautiful country called Rwanda. It is more than a quarter of the way around this huge Earth to get there, on a continent I never imagined to visit, but it is now a place I carry with me every day. I cannot ever hope to have words to explain the loveliness and grace I found in the people, but I will work toward that goal for a long time.
Many people around the world have never heard of a place called Rwanda. Most non Africans who have think first and only that it is the "place that had that genocide." But I urge you to open your minds and hearts to deeper stories about people and place. Because what I found is that Rwanda is a place made of magic, history, and possibility. And if that is true, what else could be out there?
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