Hard to come, harder to stay, hardest to leave...
That's how I would describe my 2 years in Dori, Burkina Faso. Yesterday I left for good the place that I have come to love. It was much harder than leaving America. Mostly because I have had some real genuine friendships (complete with fights, inside jokes, and all around good times) during my time here and now that it is time to leave I know that I'm leaving for good. When I left America and said goodbye to all my friends there I knew that I would be coming back and would see them again. When leaving Dori I realized that isn't the case for my friends here. So goodbye really meant goodbye. As the bus pulled out of my village and my friends waved goodbye I started to well up a bit. Of course I didn't cry, I'm a man after all...but it wasn't easy ;). A tear may have snuck it's way down my cheek if not for the fact that my heartfelt nostolgia got smashed by frustration as the bus broke down just 1K outside of town. So all in all it was a bittersweet experience. I was sad to go, but ready to leave. If you had told me I had to stay another 6 months I would not have been d'accord. So now the task at hand is to go through the obstable course necessary to transfer to Senegal and come home for Christmas. I've got about 4 tedious reports to do summing up all that I've done these past two years. On Sunday after all that stuff I fly out of Ouagadougou, BF and onto Dakar, Senegal. I'll be there for about 2 days then I'm coming home next Wednesday. For mes amis de Chicago I'll be in the "Chi" from the 16th to the 23rd of December. And as they sing "I'll be home for Christmas."

A Bientôt

You gotta love Africa.



This is my third time writing this same post. The two other versions were so humorous and clever but they weren’t meant to be posted I guess. The first time the website took my post and lost it. The second time my computer decided to loose it by tricking me into clicking “No” when prompted about some Auto Recovery feature. So here I am. Instead of painstakingly recreating the posts I’ll just tell you about them. I’m sure you would have laughed at them for sure. I told the story of my return to the states for the first time in over two years. I ingeniously used the words “triumphant return.” After that I went on to describe how I was going to be flying on a direct flight from Dakar to New York (first a flight I didn’t know existed and second a three thousand dollar flight that Uncle Sam has zero qualms about despite the fact that he could have sent me through Paris for ¼ of the price). That would have surely partially taken you aback. Then I expressed my astonishment in my eight hour layover in New York due to the fact that most of the commuter flights between NY and DC go out of LaGuardia. I would have surely made you chuckle as I played with the idea of going into New York during my layover given that NY is a shocking experience for a small town American and how it would have been much more so for someone like me who has spent all but 17 of the last 800 days on the African continent. I ended the post describing the accompanied photo. It’s a photo of me spending my last days in Dori foot deep in sand at my favorite but laborious intersection. Subsequently I told the joke of how my town is just like the beach but without the water. I don’t think you would have laughed so much at that one but maybe….

Prose exercise for The Onion aside, folks my time is ticking away. In Dori I’ve got but 9 days left followed by 5 days in Ouagadougou. Then I hop over to Senegal to spend 2 days in Dakar and finally make my way to DC via NY (with the 8 hour layover).

I’ll then be hanging out stateside for a month with a weeklong stint in Chicago. I hope I get the chance to see you all!