goodbye~
"So the journey is over and I am back again where I started, richer by much experience and poorer by many exploded convictions, many perished certainties. For convictions and certainties are too often the concomitants of ignorance. Those who like to feel they are always right and who attach a high importance to their own opinions should stay at home. When one is traveling, convictions are mislaid as easily as spectacles; but unlike spectacles, they are not as easily replaced."
~Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate
I have never been as ready to leave a place as I am to leave Mali, partially because I have struggled a lot with broken beliefs and constructs of who I am throughout the semester, partially because France is waiting on me, yet goodbyes are always bittersweet. Last week was time to say goodbye to the kind fruit ladies near the catholic mission, Sunday, to say goodbye to my missionary friends, and a few days ago, I saw the vendor at my favorite mini food boutiki to buy yogurt and the woman who works my favorite internet café for the last time. When the boutiki owner asked if I will be back, all I could give him was a half-hearted "maybe," but it is highly unlikely, really. Mali has been one of the important places I have ever visited but not one of the most enjoyable, literally changing my life plans a bit every day, tearing away ignorance and pieces of idealism to the point that I would compare the experience more to a painful waxing than to a relaxing spa treatment (please pardon the ridiculous metaphor). My time here has been anything but superfluous for personal growth, but the problem is that I in no way am equipped to be important for Mali except for as another mean toubabou who fails at speaking the native language and who does not greet people more often than she does. The mark I am leaving behind is barely noticeable beyond my research and a few discarded clothes to lighten my luggage.
However, it is undoubtedly impossible to be in a place for as long as I have been here and to not find at least a bit of love in the minutiae of the experience. Today it was time to say goodbye to those who work at the catholic mission, my home for three weeks of the experience and a place where I found shelter from everything that had been difficult or overwhelming for the other three months. Apparently my ridiculous efforts at writing a research paper in the face of heat and illness inspired Soeur Albertine, the nun who takes care of guests, to begin reading again. And if it were not for Marie, the kind girl about my age who cleans rooms there and lives with one of the nuns, I would never have experienced the amazing Saturday when we climbed up a seemingly random hill to an abandoned half-built house and overlooked Bamako, eating mangoes and talking about marriage and the future along the way. I was surprised to find that there are some people who I will miss as much here in Mali as in Rennes, leaving them today to go back to my air-conditioned room in the unbelievably, culture-shockingly upscale hotel down the street where I am staying with the rest of the girls in the program for the last few days. Yes, I will miss Soeur Albertine and Marie as well as the missionary community, most notably Shari, who literally rekindled the failing Love within me with prayer, brownie baking, and Easter dinner.
Yet again, Rennes is my next stop, and I cannot believe that three days from now, I will be there, feeling at least momentarily prepared to fill the big place waiting for me, but afraid that I will not quite fit where I did before, given how much I have changed. After all, if I cannot replace my lost convictions as easily as spectacles, I am at a very raw place right now...but as Rennes is in many ways just as chez moi as Aiken, South Carolina, there could be no better place to go to find my new, and deeper sight instead of merely putting back on my falsely rose-colored glasses...
Kan ben...et au revoir
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