In about a week, it'll be one year since I left my village early in the morning with my now-wife/then-girlfriend McKenna, and my two best friends from village, Pascal and Dayamba. They agreed to meet me at my house at 4am while it was still pitch black so that it would be easier for us to leave. I did my best to say goodbye to everyone for the four days that McKenna spent in my village. On the night before I left, I had so many people come by to talk and say goodbye that I had to put off packing until about midnight, and by the time I had everything ready I only had about an hour to sleep. When I got up I realized I had a few last minute things that I couldn't bring with me so I woke my neighbors, Fidel and Colette, and gave them the random assortment of vegetables that would have gone bad and some toys for their baby, and so the nice, long goodbye from the night before was replaced by this awkward-4:00 in the morning exchange. For some reason, the way Colette looked at me when she said thank you and goodbye a second time made me emotional, and I felt a lump forming in my throat as we started biking away. We struggled to stay on our bikes as we balanced all of my belongings along with McKenna's luggage on the four bikes in the dark.
It wasn't too long after we arrived at the main road that a hurried bush taxi arrived, and so I said a last goodbye more quickly than I wanted to my two best friends, exchanged awkward hugs (because hugging isn't usually done in their culture), and I was gone.
I guess it's the fact that the village is so far away that the goodbye felt so permanent. Or maybe it's that most of the people thought they'd never see me again, even though I tried to reassure them that I planned to come back to visit. Whatever it was, it still lingers in my thoughts nearly every day. I find myself wondering what my friends from village think about me now. Do they really think I don't want to come back? Do the people I call and talk to on occasion tell my other friends that I've been keeping in touch? Do they know that most of the time I try to call I hear a recording of a lady talking in French saying that the friend's phone is either off or doesn't have service? Do they know that I think about them and miss them?
As time goes on, I get less and less questions about my Peace Corps experience. So many things have happened since I got back a year ago: I had a job for 6 months, I got married to my favorite person in the world, and now I'm living in Baltimore getting ready to start nursing school. My life is so different, and right now it just feels like my time in Burkina Faso was so long ago. Time is hard to comprehend sometimes, and now especially as I remember that only a year ago I was in an African village and I wasn't sure what my future looked like.
The same morning that I left my village, just a few hours later on the ride to the capital I got a call from Dayamba who excitedly told me that his wife gave birth to a son not long after I left, and they named him after me (my village name, Yentema). The lump in my throat (psh, I don't cry...) returned and I started to think about how cool it was to be honored in that way. And maybe it was a reminder I needed in that moment to know that life is going to change, and it is going to be good.
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