A Short Word On My Departure Rrom Rwanda

As I began to face the last six months of my Peace Corps service and contemplate what I had accomplished, I grew bitter and disappointed in myself. I felt that I had accomplished little in my school and community. My Kinyarwanda skills were lackluster, and my integration into my village, something Peace Corps puts an overwhelming emphasis on, was not what I had hoped it would be. I felt I had not grown much as a person, developed my teaching skills or gained a better understanding of the complexities of international development. Most of all, I felt guilty for not doing all I could have for my students and neighbors. I imagined that my final blog post would be titled something like “A Failed Service”.

I vowed to complete at least one of the several projects that were moving along at incredibly sluggish rates. At my final Peace Corps conference, about three months before departure, I began feeling miserable about the prospect of saying goodbye. I had bitter feelings toward the staff at my school, who had never followed through in assisting with a single project, Peace Corps in general, but most of all myself. I figured when the time came, I would say goodbyes to my students and selected friends and families, and slip out as silently and discreetly as possible.

Things started to look up, briefly, however, as I found an enthusiastic competent partner in the HR manager of Cimerwa, the cement factory that the village revolves around. He assured me that even with my short time, he would be able to quickly move the necessary mountains to help install the community library I had been working on for most of the year, as well as help with a couple of other, smaller projects that had been on the back burner. This news brought new life to my service and I was feeling more positive about my work than I had in I don’t know how long.

Days later, however, I made the decision to depart Rwanda as soon as possible. My wife was in need of my support. We had hoped to wait until the end of my service for me to move to France to be with her, however, my presence was needed and putting her first was the only option.

It was an incredibly difficult time for me, emotionally. I had about two days in my village to pack, say quick goodbyes and, most challenging, face my departure from Rwanda, where I had spent the last two years. My relationship with Rwanda was always very conflicted. It is no secret that it is not my favorite place in the world, but at the same time, I have spent more consecutive time in Rwanda than any other place in the past eight years. Leaving it suddenly was destined to be painful. I would later realize, however, there were band-aid like qualities of my departure, and getting it over quickly would more painful in the moment, but ultimately easier than something longer and drawn out.

It was a week spent on the verge of tears, where I was thankful for all the stress of paperwork, housekeeping and packing for distracting me from my emotions. Among all the other volunteers I spent time with in my last few days at the Peace Corps office, it was easy to pretend I wasn’t going anywhere. I went about my normal business, hanging out with them over Primus’s in the evenings, kicking around stories, complaining about our work and gossiping. This was more preferable than explaining why I was going, what I was going to do, and worst of all, goodbyes. I am not proud that I neglected to say goodbye to many people I had the chance to say goodbye to. I was taking the coward’s way out.

As I was completing some of my paperwork in the Peace Corps office, a staff member asked me how I felt about my service. I probably yammered on about my frustrations, my disappointment in myself, my uncertainties about my actual impact on my students. In reality, I have no idea at this point how I feel about my service. At this point, understanding those feelings is like trying to make sense of an impressionist painting from an inch away. Everything is an indiscernible blur. I think it will take a while to step back and make sense of the two years I spent in Rwanda.