follow up to walikale

so, spend the better part of thursday in the MONUC (UN mission to DRC) air terminal along with some MONUC troops, civilian UN staff and ngo and other passengers, waiting for the flight that never took off. it was a lovely morning and i was looking forward to the helicopter ride over the mountains. it started to rain and it was unlikely we'd take off in rain, then it started to thunder....after the rain stopped, still nothing...after 3pm they finally let us know there was bad weather in walikale and the flight was cancelled, possibly to be rescheduled for the next day.

the following day spent most of yesterday morning waiting and communicating with MONUC finally to learn that the flight was not going then either. as our return flight was booked for today, my teammate went to get a refund and the trip is off. i'm actually not too disappointed as i was going mostly so the trip could happen but in the end had started to get excited about the possibility after meeting with an excellent research group here that gave me some very good ideas about the issues and what to look for. perhaps if i return to the region...

so, this is my last week. a week from today i will be on a bus in rwanda where i plan to spend a night in ruhengeri with a friend from uganda, before heading on to kigali for the first leg of my return flight to toronto. this is a week of wrapping up the work, a few final meetings and farewell. there are some people here it will be very difficult to take leave of and a part of me is not ready to go. the other part of me is looking forward to being home amongst friends again and processing what i've learned, sharing photos and continuing on my own journey of this incredible life.

this morning, i woke at 5am as usual but just after i got out from under my mosquito net, i heard the most beautiful piano music....i went out to find that under the window of T's bedroom was an overturned bucket with a speaker on it facing into T's window, the long cable leading into the door of one of the other brothers (a Spaniard who has been teaching here for 27 years!). Today is T's 30th birthday and one of the brothers chose to wake him with music. It was beautiful, what a lovely way to wake up. Tonight we will join the Salesians in their birthday celebration.

happy weekend everyone! will be back online early next week...

xoxo