Fourth and Last Visit

I just returned from my fourth and last visit from visiting my boyfriend in the Peace Corps. The focus of this trip was together time, and just enjoying each other before we are re-introduced as a couple living a regular everyday life in America.  It was an incredibly fun two and a half weeks, but I was also very aware that we were in the middle of a very particular “vacation” bubble that we might never again have the luxury to experience together in our lives.  That’s the thing, you can’t have everything you want all the time, sometimes you have to trade one thing for another–which is tough and may not seem fair, but it’s in these moments that we need to look at the positive.

Even though we had the hurdle of long-distance, we have been incredibly lucky to have spent so much us time together during the almost two years apart, just the two of us.  The downside is that since we have been enclosed in a bubble of togetherness, with us as the focus, we haven’t really had to think about sharing each other as much.  When my boyfriend returns to the states, I know his family and friends will want to see him, and our bubble of being the only two people in our own little world will drift away.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to have him home, so we can go on sushi dates and enjoy a life of showers and clean water, but there is a part of me that is sad.  Sad that this moment of time when it was just us in our own bubble tucked away in Africa, our own world, is coming to an end.

Over the course of the last two years, I spent approximately ten weeks of my life in Africa (almost three months) so it’s kind of a bittersweet time for me, it was my last trip to Kenya for either a very long time or ever.  I will miss Africa.  I will miss the tuk-tuks, the lunch spots overlooking the ocean where you can get a seafood lunch with a couple of sodas for $6 and I will miss the children at my boyfriend’s school.  I will miss “our home” in Africa, and learning how to slow down even if by force due to limited technology. There is so much I will miss, but upon returning to the states this time, I felt ready to be home, ready to leave Africa for a while, ready to focus on the rest of our life together, the next chapter.

Ultimately, any remaining fears and anxieties are left behind, and the idea of him being home, of us having a life together in the same place, wins.  This is also now the first time since he’s been away, that I’m really allowing myself to think about what the world will be like when he gets back, and looking forward to all we will do together.  I went to Africa for my last trip a little anxious knowing that my life as I know it would soon be changing, we would be entering the unknown again. Upon returning home and thinking about our time together and how we truly feel about each other and how close we have become after two years, I am now just excited thinking about having him back.  It’s time for him to come home, it’s time for us to both be home now.