season finales lose the plotline in melodrama

It looks as though my stint in Mauritania has come to an abrupt close.

As I prepared for my third year, an anticipated twelve months of national level projects, government official canoodlings, and frequent travel training dates, Mauritania hatched another plan.  One of military juntas, dismantled ministries, and slashed budgets.  In other words, my third year plans ... diminished.

With four precious days left before my required second-to-third-year-trip-home, I consulted my country director and made the difficult decision to close my service.  COS for all you Peace Corps acronym junkies, sea change for everyone else.

In record time, I completed my health clearances, acquired signatures on cancelled housing contracts, finalized project reports, and packed up a year's worth of life in two suitacses and a small box.  Seventy kilos, all told.  A process that usually takes three to five months was boiled down into 3ish% of that, and suddenly I was on a plane to Cincinnati, one-way, thanks for flying, buh-bye.

Not that administrative COS procedures necessarily take three to five months.  But pre-departure processing might.  I quickly scanned my fellow volunteers' online journals like a voyeur, peeking at how they prepared to leave.  To say goodbye to close friends.  To take last pictures of sites, to buy silly trinkets and memorabilia, to make a healthy break with what would soon be their former lives.  From the anonymous setting of the capital, these were luxuries I could not afford.  So, I looked out the port hole window of the plane and blinked a quick goodby to the RIM.

I didn't have the time to warn my family before touching down, so my permanent arrival was a most pleasant surprise for them, met with cackles of glee and violent embraces.  They did not entirely grasp the nuance of my situation.  Sure, I was glad to up into leafy trees, to sleep on a matress, to pet my cat, to drink a beer.  But the speed with which I was extracted from my previous life was ... destabilizing at best.

I continued with my homeleave as planned, meaning after a week of familial jubiliation at "home," I jumped on flights that carried me to DC, Taipei, and Chicago.  I am now several days back in Cincinnati, trying to figure out when and where I'll escape to next.

Admittedly, I have extraordinarily few constant readers, but I'd like to thank everyone who supported me through this intense journey.  There are some who followed my online musings from day one, others who perused occasionally, yet others who found me recently and pored through what I offered on these pages.  There are friends stateside who sent beef jerky, decadent soaps, miniature greeting cards, news, and love in flat rate boxes.  There are volunteers that shared text messages, rowdy parties, rocks and cadeaux and hugs and beetles in my eye.  There are Mauritanians who will never find this page, and if they do, will be unable to read it.  Vous allez me manquer, plus que je peux exprimer.  Or something eloquent like that.  Thank you seems inadequate, but it's what I got. 

Obviously, I can't summarize my service, my admiration, my gratitude in a few, inspirational, pithy statements.  But I did in a 160-some journal entries, which I will leave here as a digital marker for past-me in Mauritania.

Will I go back?  Dunno.  Not soon.  I'm still recovering from the rapid departure.  Chances are, however, that the most stable presence I'll have will not be geographically located.  It'll be somewhere online.

Till then,
e