Emerging from the Doldrums, Part 1
Let me be frank: it’s been a rough few months. Not necessarily on paper — within my head.
On paper, I’ve welcomed visitors, started building 25 latrines in my community and facilitated menstrual hygiene trainings with my community health workers and teachers from all over the sector. I’ve gone to Uganda, rafted the nile, and bungee jumped. And I’ve attended Close of Service (COS) Conference, received my official COS date, and booked my flights home (including an interlude in London). I even fought my way through a staph infection.
And yet, each time I come back to Mushaka I find myself more checked out, more people-avoidant. More able to sleep for hours on end and eat whatever’s lying around the house (rice and Kraft parmesan, anyone?). My colleagues wonder why they don’t see me as much. The nuns ask me why I don’t visit any more. My cat — well, she’s probably happy to have the company all the live long day.
I actually count myself lucky to have been depressed before, because I can recognize the symptoms and try to keep them in check. If I’m honest, I think I might have been suffering from a high-functioning depression for 6 months now, on and off. And it’s been an interesting challenge for me to try to understand why, despite things looking so good on paper, I feel so down.
For some months now, I’ve been watching the people I’m closest to leave: from my Georgetown friends in Kigali, to my closest Rwandan colleagues at site, to PCVs in my region headed off to grad school. And after putting so much effort into building those relationships, it’s been hard to stay motivated to try and foster new ones.
BUT that leaves me forgetting all the relationships I still have and can cherish until I leave — and these are the things I need to remind myself as I try to make the most of the time I have left.
I’ve had a few realizations about my personality and Rwandan culture. How I like flying under the radar, developing deep, meaningful relationships with a few people, and how, quite frankly, I just miss being in my native culture. Meanwhile Rwanda, being a post-conflict society, is difficult to break into — especially in a rural area where everyone has grown up together — and here, I am essentially a daily celebrity sighting (as one PCV put it, “it’s like we’re giraffes being spotted in the streets”). So, flying under the radar and developing deep relationships with a few people is pretty darn hard.
And honestly, I’m comfortable with all this. I’m comfortable knowing that, no matter how much I respect Rwanda and it’s people, and no matter how much I’ve valued my time here, I’m ready for it to end.
The problem, then, is that I am stubbornly clinging to those three letters: C, O, S. Close of Service. Not Early Termination. Not Medical or Administrative Separation. COS.
You can phrase it any number of ways: I have things (work, people, experiences) tying me here until the end; I have nothing in particular to go back for; I want to finish what I started; I don’t know how not finishing might affect my career in the long run. These are all true, and they should be enough. But sometimes they’re just not.
Now, I have to admit, I’ve started to have inklings of the same kinds of feelings I had when I first arrived. The same desire to please, to show up and do my work. The same appreciation for the little weird moments — hearing “Who Let the Dogs Out” on the way to work, or scaring a child to tears just by smiling in their direction. And these are the things I need to cling to as I near the time for goodbyes. Because my colleagues, acquaintances, friends, and allies in this community all deserve the same closure that I desire — the same legitimate goodbyes and farewells.
I keep saying I’m pulling out of this, that this is the end, that it stops today. And then I keep sleeping in far too late the next day, or refusing to leave my house. So I make no such claims in this post. I just want to recognize those feelings of motivation when they happen, and really try to leverage them. Because I can see the finish line now. Time is no longer indefinite; it is running out.
