Captain Transit Departs

Three months it has been since Captain Transit set out on his journey to the land of Africa, and what a journey it has been. Stumbling through an all-nighter in Belgium, bussing through the lush hills of Rwanda to the sector of Cyanika nestled at the foot of an age old volcano, enduring the many struggles of carrying out a project in a place where transcending the language barrier can be as easy as pointing from one place to another accompanied with a thumbs-up or as difficult as trying to use measurements and roughly sketched drawings for masons to adjust columns, only to find hours later that it was obviously not communicated at all. Working in a place where finding materials is nowhere near as easy as making a run down to Home Depot, however no matter where you end up buying from the prices always seem to be negotiable, depending on the receipt, or lack thereof.  Learning to work with what you have and the skills you’ve honed to adjust to the never ending road blocks along your path.

How to work well within a team where differences arise very quickly, but the teamwork and cooperation endured over the past months in order to get to where we are now allows us to strive to work better together. Learning about how little you truly need in order to be happy and content, or that maybe here those two feelings are one in the same. Something as small as a drink of water from a stranger, a plastic glove for a child to make a balloon out of, taking a sick little girl out to dinner for the first time in her life and watching the smile on her face grow to a size you never knew existed, or simply showing a child there reflection. The lessons I have learned here are those which will bring me back, to what seems a distant dream, home, as a person with new outlook not only on life and how to approach it, but also with skills from the trials endured throughout this project.

I’m sitting in the very room where I first began my journey. Only this time the trip is finally coming to a close, and in a way that seems quite fitting. With all of us sharing one room, to my left there are 10 bags strewn about in front of the door, all packed (hopefully) to the perfect weight for the plane ride home at 2 am. To my right, Michael and Dakota lay sound asleep on either edge of a shared twin bed, exhausted after a long day adventuring through Akagera National Park followed by the best meal of our trip at Kahna Kazana, or maybe they had just grown tired of listening to Oak rattle off the random conversion factors he has found in the back of his journal. 24 ¾ cubic feet = 1 perch of stone, 24 grains = 1 penny-weight, 3 scruples = 1 dram. Just a bunch of bored engineers who can’t go play Frisbee or recalculate truss designs. We have finally come to a close. I would like to express on the behalf of myself and the rest of the team an immense gratitude for all the people, teammates, friends, and families who helped make this project come to life. To be cliché, it has honestly been the trip of a lifetime that will never be forgotten. The friends made and the lessons learned are those that will never cease.

Being tired isn’t the same as being rich, but most times its close enough.