The Last Goodbye: January 10

We spent a painful morning traveling to all six of our schools, explaining our situation and saying good-bye. It’s hard to describe how emotional it was to inform our new friends that we would not be able to share the next two years with them, working side-by-side to fulfill all of our great school-improvement plans. As a small consolation, we were able to leave each school with some Frisbees (donated by Daredevil disks, a Canadian Frisbee company) and hope that they will continue to encourage their students to play. As we had agreed with Ma, we also informed our principals that we would spend the following three weeks investigating all possibilities of returning to the village with another volunteer organization. If we were not able to return within a few months, we agreed that it would be fairer to everyone if we all moved on. Before we knew it, we were back at the airport, preparing for our 19 hour flight back to the states. We had been informed not to carry any liquids or cosmetics onto the plane, but were pleasantly surprised when our water bottles weren’t checked at the security gate. Taking this as a good sign, we filled up all four of our bottles at a water fountain before joining the line at our gate. It soon became clear that we would be going through more security at the boarding gate, and scurried to hastily dump our Nalgenes into other discarded water bottles. The new security measures were obviously not well thought out as the two pea-sized trash cans were overflowing with hazardous items such as bottled water and toothpaste. As we passed through three more security checks, all between the ticket counter and the plane, we resigned ourselves to the fact that it was going to be a long ride home.

Although our seats were right next to the bathroom (Joe didn’t even have to get up to use the toilet) and a couple with an infant, we soon drowned our sorrows by catching up on all of the movies we had missed over the past six months. Kelli laughed so hard at the ending of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ as to elicit stares from halfway up the plane.

The ride was broken up with another security check while refueling in Senegal, made more interesting by having to sit for twenty minutes with all of our carry-on’s on our laps while security guards tore apart the seats of departed passengers. Stumbling out of the plane almost a day later, we had no problem getting through security and finding our way to Satan’s den, a.k.a. baggage claim. Our irrational optimism that we were entitled to a clean pick-up because of all we had suffered over the past few weeks was slowly drained from us as we were once again the last ones standing around an empty carousel, anxiously looking for our fourth bag (ironically the only backpack that wasn’t stolen on the mountain). After a few more lines, tedious paperwork and the promise that our bag would be delivered to the Kramer’s’ house if a few days, we were finally able to leave the airport.


pictures: parting shots of Vezubuhle