A few weeks ago I met Kelli, my replacement. I’ve been using the word “replacement” for a while now, but its more real now that I have a name and a face to put to her. We met when she came for “second site visit” a time in training where you are more than halfway & they have assigned you to the location you will be for the next two years & you get to go see it for a week.

I had about a day and a half to get to know her, show her around, make introductions and tell stories of my time in Kumadzi with her. I left her for 4 days to experience being in the village on her own and contemplate what her life there will be like for the next two years & picture how she will fit in her new home.

In brief interactions with her, I feel she will be a nice match for my community. My family and teachers were happy with their time with her as well. That didn’t stop them from trying to talk me into staying as well.

Leaving the village was really hard. I can’t even articulate the slew of emotions I went through building up to it and still can’t five days after having left the village. I spent about a week going different places to say goodbye to the people, places and things I have fallen in love with here. Eating tons of nsima, giving remembrance gifts, reminiscing over laughs shared. I packed my things a few days before the cruiser came to pick me up & gave a good portion of it to my family. My last day in the village I had one final dance party with my kids, one last meal with my family, and got attacked by ants one last time.

The morning the cruiser came to get me two volunteer neighbors from my district came to sit with me on my porch in my final hours in Kumadzi & did the last ride on the bumpy road into Chipata with me. I didn’t cry, I think if one of the women in my family had shed some tears, that would have set me off, but Zambians don’t show emotion like that. It will come. Right now it still feels like I’m going on a month long vacation, but the sadness of all the goodbyes shared will sink in eventually.

A quote that has been passed around the volunteer community, in this time of leaving and saying numerous goodbyes:
“The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself…oh the last time how clearly you see everything as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.”