MEMO

            When people have told me that their trips around the world “flew by,” I’ve never understood. For me, days drag by and I look only to the end and never to the now. Nothing has ever “flown by” for me; not until Niswarth. I am currently sitting in the Ahmedabad airport, waiting to board our flight to Dubai, and those are the only words that creep into my head. These past two and a half weeks have flown by for me, and I really wish they hadn’t. I wish I could relish every moment, remember every laugh, and relive every cry, but I can’t. My time in India is drawing to a close, and I haven’t yet decided how I feel. I’m eager to see my sister yet devastated at the prospect I will never see Devendrabhai, Bupatbhai, or Apkoorbhai again. I’m ecstatic to see my dogs, but now every time I see them I will remember the dog at ESI with the ember eyes and the bark that scared us even though we didn’t mean it. I think, much like I will forever see that dog in my own, I will forever see India in my life in the states.

            I am bringing home a lot of packed baggage that I need to sift through. I don’t know how I feel about the past two and a half weeks and the way they changed me, and I especially don’t know how my mind is going to begin to process everything I saw during my time here. That’s my problem though; I don’t yet know what I am bringing home. I reflected so much on myself while I was here: the ways I act, think, and do. But I don’t know what that means for me. I saw so much love and selflessness in the Manav Sadhna family, and I recognize that I saw it and I accept that I saw it, but I don’t know what it means for me. I could forget all about it or I could now dedicate ever fiber of myself to live with love in everything I do. Or I could see it in random parts of my life which draw the memories out of the back of my brain, reminding me of this place, these people, this family.

            I don’t really know what I am trying to say in this post. This one is for me more than anyone else; maybe by looking back on this I can see how far I’ve come, or how little I’ve come to understand what I saw in my time here. I just don’t know yet. So, I don’t know what I am bringing home. I know I am bringing people, places, and emotions packed into my heart eager to get out. But as of right now, I am bringing back the experience of actually being here. Now, I just have to make sense of it. 

--Maddie