Oh the places you'll go

It just hit me.

I leave for Cape Town in a little over a month. A MONTH. When does life slow down?

Our first group meeting with everyone going to Cape Town put me back to the first Rwanda meeting--the pizza, the awkward introductions and "interesting facts," the review of what to pack, and the palpable excitement of the certain adventures and unknown experiences we were all going to have.

Remembering that first Rwanda meeting, I never could have predicted what my summer had in store for me. Looking around the room today brought back that spark of excitement that can only come from the knowledge that something huge is about to transpire.

Today was a crashing mash up of everything amazing. After the Cape Town meeting, I went to hear Fatou Bensouda, Deputy Prosecutor of the ICC who we met in The Hague over the summer, and was thrilled, comforted, and overwhelmingly beyond happy to see so many people from our Rwanda group. Speaking with her afterwards was not only thrilling, but also reaffirmed the importance of being a witness to these horrific events. Fatou embodies the power that individual people have to make a change in the world, and why it is so important to me to live in the places of the world the rest of us would rather not be reminded exist. Places like Rwanda, where today commemorates the beginning of the 100 day genocide in 1994, or Kenya, where election violence threatens democracy, or the DRC, where women are constant victims of rape and exploitation, or South Africa, where the consequences of apartheid continue to this day.

Sorry Dad, but Cape Town is just the first (I guess second?) step.

Because after Rwanda, I saw how much it had changed me. Not only in my broader understanding and interest of the world and politics, but in the way I saw myself working within this obnoxiously complicated system. The way I approached problems and other people changed, I refused to let go of what was important to me, and I struggled to find a balance between my life here and now and my future goals and expectations. This has been a hard semester. 18 credit hours has been exhausting, my emotions have been intensely on edge, I've been reminded of the power of forgiveness and I've accepted I sometimes make mistakes. Sometimes it feels like I'm going to Cape Town simply to run away.

But then I remember why I wanted to go to Cape Town in the first place, and it feels like I'm running towards something instead.