After three years, I'm leaving Delhi tonight. I think I'm too tired to really sum up everything I've learned in and from India. Clearly the time has come - I'm ready but it's also scary to think of not living here. What I'll miss most is the people - Satender and Tenzing have become like family to me and were the teariest goodbyes. My friends seem like they'll always be just down the street - I don't think it's really hit me that they won't! I get the sense that my life will never be quite as crazy as it has been here. Where else do you see a stray camel, a naked holy man and monkey gangs all on the way to work? (that was one day last week) I'm excited for better food options and greenery that isn't dusty and safaris!!! but I will miss how easy it can be to get things done here. For instance, last year the airline tore up my small suitcase and I've not found the perfect replacement so I asked my driver yesterday if he could mend it with packing tape. Instead he took it to the guy sitting on the corner who fixes shoes and he stitched it up perfectly. It's like new! I think it cost 50 cents.
I'm completely unprepared to do anything for myself again - not looking forward to cooking, cleaning, ironing, washing, driving, running my own errands, making my own phone calls. Satender actually thanked me for "his wife", ref
erring to the fact that I paid for her surgery a year or so ago. Clearly he's giving me too much credit but it broke my heart. Tenzing and Satender and Tenzing's mother all cried, which of course sent me bawling. It's so bizarre to me that by total chance I ended up with this life where I don't have to worry about money - I have way more things than anyone needs - and Tenzing, who is my age, ends up so poor. Her family is the last picture.
That's probably all I can process for now, I'm just praying that tomorrow me, my cat and my excess luggage all
arrive safely in Nairobi (of those three things I'm least worried about myself).
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