Tomorrow will start my final full week in Sierra Leone. My replacement arrived on Thursday and I have the rare luxury of being able to do an in-person handover. Now that I'm going and I've told everyone, each day I find myself fielding local colleague's comments about how they'll miss me and asking when I'll come back and my international colleague's asking me how it feels to be leaving.
Since I've arrived here, I've watched colleagues leave one after the other. Emergency response is by its nature a very transient world. Even though you only get to know people for a few months the intensity of our lives here and the constant contact in both our professional and personal lives forges bonds that are surprisingly strong.
My feelings about leaving are extremely mixed, for both professional and personal reasons. Although the OICCs that I was hired to manage have now closed and I've finished all of my work on those, my work as Freetown Health Manager is far from over. I've been able to accomplish a lot a work I had planned, but it never ends up being quite enough, but I don't think it ever really is. When I came, the Ebola epidemic was already starting to end and I really believed that I would be here to see an Ebola-free Salone. Unfortunately, getting to zero is a long process and we're seeing a resurgence of cases, especially in Freetown. I know that I won't be able to see us get to zero, but I feel confident that it will happen.
Personally, I just feel sad about leaving the people that I've met here. I know that with other expats, there's a strong possibility that we'll cross paths again some day. The development world is small and I've already seen that it's less accurate to say goodbye and more accurate to say until we meet again. However, it's different with national staff. I know that with most of the Sierra Leoneans I've met here, I'll only see them again if I come back to Sierra Leone, and maybe not even then. This isn't the first time I've come to feel at home in a new country and then had to leave its people behind, but it's one of the parts of this world that never really gets easier for me.
I think that all of those feelings are amplified by knowing that when I head back to the US I'll be starting over again in a new city with only a few existing connections. Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited to be starting my DrPH and I think that I will really enjoy the program and living in New Orleans, but my stamina for making new friends yet one more time is starting to wane.
I know that those of you who have read my blog throughout my seven months here and who have kept in touch with me during that time know that this has been far from an easy experience. Even so, I don't regret my decision to come here. I think that in whatever small way, I've been able to contribute to a response that I think is very important. All of the challenges that I've faced along that way have been learning experiences and I'll leave Sierra Leone having grown a lot.
