Saying Goodbye

Tomorrow I fly back to the USA and I don’t really know what I’m going to do.

The last week and half at site was boring at times, but I tried to take advantage of every moment to visit friends, eat my favorite foods, take pictures and just wander around Sensenti. Last Wednesday was a very rough day as reality hit hard. I had people coming and going that day to pick up the things I had decided to leave behind and to say goodbye. By around 10am, I had almost nothing left in my house – my tables, chairs, bed and basically everything in the kitchen were gone. And then it was just Jackson and me hanging out outside, watching the world go by.

I had lunch at Mami’s house and I spent a couple hours playing with María Belen before going back to my practically empty house to pick up the last few things and, the most difficult part, take all of Jackson’s stuff to his new home (and I’m falling apart again just thinking about it). Being overtired from not sleeping well for the past week was not helping me to hold things together as I finished my goodbyes that afternoon.

After retrieving my stuff and sending it over to Mami’s in the mototaxi, I took Jackson’s things to his new home, and then we went for one last walk together. We went over to my host family’s house to say goodbye since I hadn’t seen my host dad in awhile. Every time I visited, he was out picking coffee and I really want to be able to say goodbye. Of course, I started crying as he and my host mom said how happy they were to have had me living with them and how I was always welcome in their home.

And then it was time for, quite possibly, the hardest part. Saying goodbye to Jackson. Even knowing he wouldn’t do well in the USA, not to mention the stress of moving for a pet, it’s still hard to leave him behind. I know the family will take care of him, though he won’t get quite the same level of love as he did from me, and I know he loves them. He was a good friend, a good protector and I’m going to imagine him happily wandering around town and running all over the farm.

I left Jackson with his new family Wednesday night since I was sleeping at Mami’s house and leaving early the next morning. I had baleadas for dinner and spent some more time playing with María Belen and talking with Mami before bed. The next morning was the other difficult goodbye – with Mami. I might have been able to hold it together, but Mami started crying, which of course got me going again. And then it was time to leave, and as we drove out of Sensenti, I looked back on my beautiful community and thought nos vemos.

So now I’m sitting in the hotel in Tegucigalpa and getting ready for one last goodbye tomorrow when all my fellow volunteers and me part ways either at the hotel or at an airport during a connection in the USA. Though knowing I’ll probably be seeing some of them again makes it a little easier. This has been one of the most challenging, most rewarding and best experiences of my life and I’m sorry it has to end early.

One of my fellow volunteers found this quote and I think it’s appropriate for my current situation: “An inconvenience is only an adventure looked at wrongly, and an adventure only an inconvenience rightly considered” (G.K. Chesterton). We’ll see where my next adventure takes me now that this one is ending.