This is the day I'm leaving. Right now Sheila and I are doing the last minute packing. The final step will be to pack up my computer, which will mean that I am really going to be someplace else. How much the computer anchors me in cyberspace; we are already cyborgs and just haven't heard the news.
People think of this as a great adventure, and perhaps it is. My experience though isn't of adventure, if adventure means lions and tigers and shoot ups and facing bad guys. The basic skill involved in this seems to be list making and long term planning and negotiating things that don't work. List-making as a martial art.
Everybody asks me how I feel. I tell them I am excited and nervous. They tell me that is appropriate. After a while though it feels like we are reading from the same script. The subtext is more like: I can't believe that I got myself into this, or Perhaps I could go to San Franscisco for the duration of the Fulbright and just tell people i went to Rwanda. I've said that to people too, and they laugh, as if I'm joking. I'm not joking, or at least not too much.
Really the hardest part of it all will be missing Sheila. We haven't been separated for this long since we got together. For two "distancers" we have become very attached. Well, it is a growth experience, and has taught us how much we mean to each other. "you never miss your water till the well runs dry," as the country song has it.
Next week in kigali.
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