the next adventure

It's been a terribly long time since I've last posted. So long, my time as an expat has dwindled down to four weeks and change. These last four weeks serve to be my busiest and most fruitful yet. Certainly not the hardest - I've had my hardest weeks, I'm glad they're behind me, and I got through them with the support and encouragement of everyone reading this blog. But the busiest? Definitely. Already in the last five days, I've been downtown to Kampala for four of them, I've bought furniture and moved into a new house, I've researched the maize market, sold more pigs after re-negotiating a supply deal, and taken care of A LOT of Kyklou business. When my four weeks and change are finished, I'll have settled Kyklou into their new home, bought a car, registered as an NGO, stabilized and transferred the farm to someone else, and developed an approach to tackle a small problem in Uganda - the maize value chain.

That will be my legacy, what I've accomplished here, what will go on my resume and what my successors will thank me for (I'm certain of this, our new house will be awesome, but not finished until my last day here). But what I'll tell people back home, the stories I'll share with my friends and family, all of you reading this, are the little struggles and joys and failures and successes that make up the inch by inch terrain of my time in Uganda - not the massive valley we were in and the hill we've climbed, but the rocks and pebbles along the way, the ones that got stuck in my shoe and made my life miserable, and the ones I could climb on top of, sit and watch the sunrise.

Each and every email from one of you is one of those little moments of joy, each comment, every time I see the stats tick up with one more viewer. I'm more thankful than I can say for all the prayers I never heard about, and the ones I did.

It seems like the end, but really it's simply the beginning of the end. We're focusing on knowledge transfer and turnover, creating deliverables and tying up loose ends. Each week is so busy it flies by like a day, only when I look back have we done so much more than 24 hours would allow. I'm beginning to prepare for my life back home, more mentally and emotionally than actual plans, even though I'm doing that as well. I'll come home changed, this many new experiences guarantees that. I'm working in these last four weeks to make that change count and to make it stick.

I think, from all the support I've had on this adventure, the next won't be too hard. So here's to the next adventure.