Gettin' Gone

The green expanse back dropped by the cement-feathered sky made me cry today. Or at least I think it did. It could have been the wind, the dust maybe, or perhaps it’s that I’m leaving soon. The latter is a thought I’ve failed to give much attention. Being here has demanded so much of me I haven’t had a lot of time to dwell on not being here. But ‘not being here’ it comes.
It’s coming like winter in California. A sneaky sort of occasion marked by slowly bared sycamores and the end of pomegranates. By a homogenization of domes dinners (you begin to notice when every night is ‘butternut squash and potato soup night’) and by the charcoaling of the western sky from the four pm flight of the crows. It’s slow and quiet, terribly tragic and hopelessly romantic all at once. I guess leaving Uganda feels something like this, if it has to feel like something, this’ll do.

My story has laid itself out in a way that makes me feel simultaneously like I’ve been here for bloodlines and like I’ve just arrived. One of the clichéd ironies of moving to a new place is that just as one’s getting settled, just as I’m feeling home and comfortable and ready to throw my cares to the wind and explore…its time to go. Time to board a plane and eat mini pretzels and force myself not to think of what I’ve left. The landscape that could stop hearts, my village made of sticks, bricks and mud and containing nothing but molten gold open arms and smiles beaming equatorial sunshine, and the kids…these damn kids. When I leave, who’s gonna take on the role of 100 children screaming, “Shanoni! Shanoni! How are yoo? I em fyne. Byee! Byee!” everyday on my walk to and from the clinic…who?


I’m not gonna worry myself over it too bad yet. After all I still have 17 days and 3 hours left on the continent. That’s a fair piece of time to enjoy, to listen, to learn, to love. And …I can always comfort myself in knowing I only have 30 more months of university before I can come back.