Goodbye is the hardest word

It's just after 7 in the morning and there's every possibility the guard will soon come round to tell me that we have a visitor.

It has been interesting living in a society where, for the most part, relationships take priority over just about everything else. Running late for work, being generally busy, or even having a pain in your stomach caused by that questionable meat aren't good enough reasons to cut a conversation before its natural end.

When we arrived I got to know several people on the bicycle route to work. After a couple of weeks I found that the 15 minute bike ride had just turned into a 30 minute ride, because I was obligated to greet everyone en route. If I was running late, I'd go a different way to work...but those extra streets would add 15 minutes to the journey anyway.

We started to really enjoy this part of the Burkinabé culture, and we thought we'd adjusted to it...until we started trying to say goodbye. We leave in a couple of days.

Last night we had a few of our students over for dinner. We had a great night...and the guitar and djembé made an appearance after the food. When they left, we tried to say goodbye.

'I'll come by tomorrow to say goodbye,' one of our students said. (Thinking of how many people we will say goodbye to tomorrow, we hinted that this was 'goodbye'.) 'No, no...first thing tomorrow.'

We've had this same experience over and over, with the final act of saying 'goodbye' delayed to the last possible moment, even if it comes at a great inconvenience to the person, who is willing to trek back out to your place to say 'goodbye', again.

We will miss this outward show of affection, even though trying to get everything organised today and tomorrow will be next to impossible...because relationships take priority over packing.

One great benefit, however, is that the handshake is the only acceptable way to greet and say goodbye...so there won't be any awkward moments.

Jon