Looking towards the end of service

Greetings Earthlings!  It's been quite some time, I know.  I've been occupied lately with a beautiful thing - pondering the future.  This August I'll start a master's in public health at the University of Arizona as a Peace Corps Fellow, exactly the situation I've imagined myself in since 2009, when I began my Peace Corps application.  West Africa and I are ready for a break from each other.  Not a divorce per se, just a separation.  It needs to enjoy gazing at fresh-faced volunteers who are full of optimism and an appropriate amount of innocence while I need to enjoy some fruits and vegetables and Starbucks.  We'll be back together in a few years, I'm sure.

By my  (not unreasonable) calculations, I have about eleven weeks left of Peace Corps service.  If someone in Washington loves me, I'll be on a plane on July 1st.  Like I said, it's really, really time for me to go.  Certainly there are things that I'll miss about Kandi and about Benin - like entire pinneaples for $.20, the maman by the post office who makes amazing rice and beans and wagasi, and speaking Hausa to my Nigerien leather goods guy - but I'm ready for the next step.

Last night, because my brain was full and head pounding, I took a walk on my favorite running path, which cuts through several fields and over to what used to be a gravel collection area.  It's the most peaceful part of town and close to my house, and I wanted to be out and about without having to be especially "on."  This, as I'm sure PCVs throughout the world would tell you, is always a huge challenge.  There are several enormous (several stories tall) mango trees along the path, and I watched as two women with long sticks tried poking out the mangoes while another one precariously climbed around in the tree, simultaneously balancing on and shaking the branches.  A Fulani man herded a group of about twenty cows nearby and greeted me when he passed.  As I got further into the field,  I spotted a teenaged boy doing homework under a giant neem tree, undoubtedly enjoying the peace and quiet and shade.  Two dusty men with dogs on their laps passed on a motorcycle, heading out to the bush to hunt rabbits or bushrats.   These scenes, along with a sunset view of "my" colline/hill and for the first time this spring, smelling the newly emerging mint leaves, is what I want to remember about my time here.  A returned volunteer assures me I won't remember the bad - being called "batoure" every time I leave the house, bush taxi travel, or obnoxious and sexist treatment by men.  I am grateful for selective memory.  I will forever say that Peace Corps service is a privilege and that my entire worldview has changed because of it.  I was thinking last night about how it also marked the end of my young adulthood and naivete.  As much as I've tried to hold onto those things, I understand now more than ever what it means - however complicated - to be actively engaged in the world, to be in service to others, and perhaps the most profoundly for me, doing so as an American.  I'm so, so very excited to continue on this journey as a volunteer.  For now, though, eleven more weeks of  baby weighings, vaccination paperwork, and my radio show.  Allons-y toward the end.