It's Wednesday morning. The kids are at school and Caleb is playing golf with his dad, who finally arrived at 2 am on Monday after lots of delays. The weather has turned here - rainy season seems to be over and it's gotten much warmer. Still very pleasant this morning, looking out on our garden which is in full bloom thanks to Theo's hard work and the past month's rains. The oranges are finally ripe, and we've been enjoying fresh green beans and little tomatillo-like berries. Some tomatoes are almost ripe, and the mangoes are getting bigger, though I'm not sure if they'll be ready before we leave... which is in less than 3 weeks... which is hard to comprehend. Our impending departure, and everything we have left to do before we go, is very front-of-mind right now, even as we continue to try to stay present and connected and, this week, to spend time with Grandpa and give him a glimpse into our life here.
Adding to my sense of being in multiple places and headspaces is the fact that I took a trip to DC last week. I was conflicted about going... the Clean Cooking Implementation Science Network (which funded some of my work in Ghana over the past several years and includes a great group of researchers I really enjoy), was having a wrap-up & next steps meeting, and I was excited to join the conversation and reconnect with that community. At the same time, it was very hard to leave here with so little time left. Mazie was quite salty about me going... "Why do YOU get to go when you're making ME be here in the first place?" I was also not looking forward to the travel itself... two long trips there & back in less than a week (I left on Sunday and got back Saturday afternoon).
In the end, the trip was great - I crushed the jetlag (slept well on the long plane ride and got myself on East Coast time without any trouble), had a great meeting (lots of colleagues have worked in Rwanda, so I actually got some good perspective and advice on work I'm trying to start here as well as motivation to publish more of my Ghana results), and got to have dinner with two friends from my JPB Environmental Health Fellows program, Leah and Jen. It was both odd and very familiar to be back in the US... a glimpse of what it will likely be like when we actually go home, I expect. Interestingly, the biggest thing that stood out to me walking around Bethesda and DC when I arrived on Monday was how QUIET it was. I don't think of it as being oppressively loud here, but as I'm sitting back here in Kigali writing there are lots of sounds in the background... birds chirping, a kid crying and then laughing, someone hammering, people talking outside our walls, cars & motos honking in the distance, children's music playing at a nearby school (Frere Jacques & Wheels on the Bus). The church on our street also has a loudspeaker and brings church right to us for multiple hours a week. At night we hear our neighbor's baby crying and dogs barking. I've gotten used to the sounds and don't think about them a lot... now that I am paying attention, I think I enjoy the reminders of what's going on around me, the sense of being surrounded by other lives and experiences. So it was funny to notice the quietness in DC, even in the middle of a big city. I was out & about during the day on a Monday so I think it was a particularly quiet time, maybe not representative of average noise levels in the area, but still noticeably different than here. Makes me curious what will stand out when we get back.
For now: focusing on the next few days with Grandpa and then getting organized for our last two (!) weeks.
1 comment:
Sweet post -- I'm going to miss looking for your posts when you get back :)
But I will really enjoy being able to pop over and see you so that will make up for it by a lot! LY
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