Farewell Ceremony

Just two hours ago, we had a Farewell Ceremony which was held for all of the volunteers and our host families.  It was soo much fun!  Myself and another volunteer did a 7 or 8 minute speech in Kinyarwanda which had just about everyone in tears from laughing so hard...and then a few of us volunteers performed the traditional Rwandan dance for our families.  The families absolutely loved the entire ceremony.  They laughed with us, danced with us, and you already know they ate with us.  The entire ceremony was in Kinyarwanda and was put together and led solely by the volunteers.  We were all a little apprehensive about it since we have only been speaking this language for 10 weeks, but once the program began, everything flowed rather smoothly.  There was one hiccup though...

The volunteer who I blogged about yesterday was able to attend the ceremony with her family, but shortly after it was over, she had to leave us...in front of everyone...to go back to Kigali so that she could fly back to America.  This really rubbed me the wrong way, as the timing couldn't have been any worse.  Today was the girl's birthday, so for them to make her leave today was kind of cruel.  She has to spend her birthday alone in Kigali and deal with the fact that she has to go home.  It's really upsetting that they would do her like that, however, all of the volunteers sang her happy birthday and made sure to send her on her way with some comforting words of encouragement.  By the time the car pulled away with her in it, the girl, her host mother, myself,  and some other volunteers were in tears.  It just doesn't seem fair, but then again, life isn't fair.

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea

Written 7/15/12 at 7:35p