28 Years Later.

It is my birthday today. It is also in exactly twenty-two days, to the day, that I shall depart Ouagadougou by airplane, bound for the Home of the Free and the Bush. I have thus far observed the passing of three birthdays here in Burkina Faso, and am quite ready to celebrate my next one in my homeland.

All right, I will admit it: this post is more for me than it is for you. I have found that very few Americans, when I tell them that I am serving in the Peace Corps, understand what that entails, particularly when it comes to how long that service lasts. Not that I blame them—it is not exactly an easy job to explain. I would like to clarify this much, at least: this is not a job you do until you feel like you have had enough, and then you just quit. Okay, I take that back: it can be exactly that, but, technically, each and every Peace Corps volunteer signs a contract that states they will serve at least two years in their assigned country. And I would like to give my friends and family an advance heads-up that, in just a few weeks, I will finally be back among them, no longer a cyber-ghost:

"Where's Dabbler?"
"Somewhere in Africa, I think."
Yes, well... no longer, Dear Readers.

My imminent return to America is something I have been looking forward to for quite some time. And yet, as the day itself approaches, I find myself more and more intimidated by the prospect of this homecoming. For starters, as I have mentioned before, I no longer know where "home" is; my old apartment is long-gone, leased to someone else; the social network I relied on to further my career in the entertainment industry is dead, having been neglected for ages; and I do not even know what city I will settle in, or what job to now pursue. It is also difficult to accept that many of my friends have gone on with their lives during the time that I have spent here in Burkina Faso, that we cannot all just pick up where we left off two years ago.

This is not to say that I do not want to come back. Believe you me, I am more than ready! I'm just feeling... a little displaced, I suppose. But I wanted to let people know, once and for all, that YES, I am coming back, and NO, I did not turn hippie. I'm still the same me, the same Dabbler, albeit with a few more stories to tell, a few more scars to show off, and a lovely new mail order bride. (Okay, that last part isn't true. She said no.) And this is not my last post in The Burkina Files... I have something else entirely planned to close out this pseudo-journalistic experience. This is just my friendly way of telling you all, back in the Western World, that I am finally coming back home—once I figure out where that is, of course.

Be prepared. Be very prepared.