Last Night at the Hideaway

Posted on by Elle
It’s Saturday night.  I’ve just work my last shift, and for now, I am alone. Blissfully alone.  I love my friends, I do, but as an introvert at heart, being around people is exhausting, and tonight, tonight, I am blissfully alone. Tomorrow night, I will say good-bye to even more friends. And to my kitty cats. But tonight, tonight I am alone. Just me, Lucy, and Molly on the prairie. On my last night at the prairie, I watched the series finale of  The Americans, my favorite TV show over the last six years.  How fitting that the series ended just prior to my departure.  Lucy, Molly and I curled up on the couch watching my favorite Russian spies.  So many things are going to change in the next week, the next month, the next year. In the words of my favorite characters, “I’ll adjust.’
I worry if I’ll ever learn Kinyarwandan.  If I’ll ever learn to cook without the use of a microwave. If I’ll learn to ‘live’ without the luxuries I’ve become accustomed to having. If I’ll make friends. If the people in the village I get assigned to will  accept me.  If I will do any good.  People say to write down your expectations of what your Peace Corps’ Service will be like, then crumple up that sheet of paper and throw it away.

I have never regretted my decision to serve in the Peace Corps. I first heard of it in middle school. I met a middle aged man who’s name I’ve forgotten. He was unemployed, staying in a homeless shelter, and lived with disabilities. He confessed that if he could play his cards all over again, he’d absolutely do this one thing: Peace Corps. The idea stuck with me, as well as the concept that I had more privileges than others, and the idea that I had a moral obligation to use my privilege to lessen the suffering of others.  And at this stage of life, I have the skills to do so.

Two years is a long time, but yet, it’s not. Life will go on in America; just as it will in Rwanda whether I am there or not. I applied to the Peace Corps in September 2016. I was invited to serve in July 2017, and I  depart for Rwanda in  2018.  Nearly two years have already passed.  The relationships we make in life is all that we have.