4/24/06

Many of my now former colleagues have already left, including a group of more than a dozen who went straight back to the US two days ago.   Saying goodbye, and watching people trickle away to Mali, Benin, Mauritania, and beyond has been tough, a mixture of hugs, tears, laughs and plans to meet again, somewhere, someday.   I can't imagine going straight back to the US- as nice as it'll be to be home, I need some sort of transition.   Finally (and suddenly, it feels) my time arrives- the plan is to spend a week in Paris before continuing on to California.   After that, I have no idea.

Because of a ticket and timing snafu, my meaningful goodbye is thrown off as I race to grab a free ride to the airport in Douala, Cameroon's commercial capital, with a Peace Corps Land Cruiser.   Coincidentally, I'm traveling with Kate and Greger, two PCV's from my group who are transferring to Mauritania,.   After a three-hour hotel stay (Peace Corps' official policy is to give each of the transferring volunteers a hotel voucher, despite the fact that our flight is leaving at 2:00 AM, and we have to be at the airport three hours early), we say goodbye to Kimberly, a first-year volunteer who's heading to Mali.  

The Douala airport is brutally humid, and every breath feels like it comes through a hot washcloth as we make our way through check-in, security, customs, airport tax, departure tax, waiting, a thunderstorm, more waiting, and finally, boarding.   We leave just after 2:30 for Casablanca, where Greger and Kate will catch a plane for Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, and I'll be off to Paris, to try to begin my first-world life again.

I arrive at Orly airport late that afternoon, exhausted and head off to my friend's house in the center of the city as quickly as the Metro can carry me.   It feels more than a little bizarre, riding an automated monorail and subway, having been in Gounou-Gaya less than 10 days before.   The same thing happened to me on my European vacation in December, but again I find myself marveling at the speed, efficiency, and sheer abudance of everything.   As if being whisked away at the first sign of trouble and the subsequent luxury weren't enough, I realize how very lucky I am, to be part of a world like this.   I've become so accustomed to the poor, hot, undeveloped reality of life in Chad that seeing traffic lights, supermarkets, or skyscrapers is strange.  

Even stranger is seeing people or things I associate with Chad somewhere else- I pass the Chadian embassy, for example, and seeing the familiar blue-yellow-red tricolor makes me do a double take.   The weirdest feeling though is when I meet up with Josh and Monica, who are heading to Thailand in a few days, in front of Notre Dame.   Walking around Paris with them I have to keep reminding myself that it's all right that my friends who I was with a week ago in Cameroon, and a week before that in Chad are now here, sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower eating bread and cheese, and drinking cheap red wine.

Monica ends up bringing a little more of Africa with her than most- she's unwilling to buy shoes for some reason, and wanders around Paris for a few days in cheap Nigerian flip-flops until her feet are so cold they curl up like claws, and Josh and I have to carry her up and down Metro station stairs.   Eventually she gives in and finds some cheap knock-offs; 'Hard corps de la paix,' indeed.

Monica isn't a PCV any longer though, and neither am I- three weeks to the day after Adam's 5 AM knock on the door, I board a plane at Charles DeGaulle airport, and after stops in Washington and San Francisco step onto the cold tarmac of Arcata, CA, home.   I was never expecting to be home under these circumstances, and what happens next is anyone's guess- just as the Peace Corps chapter ends, a new one is about to begin...

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