What Its Like To Say Goodbye

A couple days ago I said goodbye to one of my closest friends here in Azerbaijan.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't get too hung up on goodbyes with close friends because those are the people I am sure I will get to see again.  However, it is always sad to watch a person you love leave while you must stay.

What strikes me here is due to the structure of Peace Corps service.  You have two years here, one year as the new volunteer, one year as the old volunteer.  And though it seems to crawl at a catatonic pace, one day you look up and realize the months have flown by.  It feels like a milestone saying goodbye to this friend because I met her when she was in the exact same place I am in now.  She was in the process of saying goodbyes to her friends while entering into the seemingly endless middle of her service.

I didn't know her as a new volunteer, only as an old, combat-hardened, volunteer with a year of experience under her belt.  The ups and lows we discussed her experiencing are those same ups and lows I'm experiencing right now as a volunteer who has finally discovered what his main projects are while having a bit of cultural understanding to help him navigate and frustrate them.

In a way I wasn't expecting, my service is dramatically thrown into perspective.  In the same brief amount of time it took me to form this life-long friendship, I'll be saying goodbye to, inshallah, another life-long friendship, who will be watching me leave, feeling sad and excited and even a little jealous that I'm now about to do one of the best parts of Peace Corps service-finish it and return home.