Here is the only journal entry I wrote during our travel day into Month 11. I had taken melatonin to help me sleep on the bus and what is written below is the product of having taken melatonin and not being able to sleep. Enjoy!
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Last travel day before the final travel day.
Actually, that’s a lie because we’re traveling back to Honduras for Awakening (conference with 3 different squads) & Final Debrief.
Anyway, we’re driving into Month 11. Which is just nuts.
Current location: A blue plastic chair with a broken arm and a wooden leg. 12:30am on November 3 in, I think, the entry border crossing in Honduras (we have to cross through Honduras to get to Nicaragua).
We have been in a 15 passenger van (2 vans. 2 teams in each) for 3 hours and have 11 more hours to go.
It’s cramped. My feet are swelling, which is not super typical. And 15 minutes ago I took 2 melatonin (the stronger ones). I did not know we would be stopping at the next border so soon. Or maybe I did and I wanted to take them anyway.
Either way, they are kicking in and there is a strong possibility that I will fall asleep in this chair, get left behind and have to make this dirty, smoky, building my new home.
So sad.
Because Jess Wait and I finally got the hang of listening to the same song at the same time on our different phones. And I have a ton of snacks I wanted to eat.
But such is life. You gotta live with the cards you’re dealt, and this is my hand. A lifetime of greeting passerbys in my broken blue chair.
I can maybe decorate with lost items and colorful candy wrappers discarded in the trash can.
I wonder if my squad will come back for me. Maybe in time for final debrief?
They will cross the border again, carrying the cardboard cutout shrine they made of me because they missed me so, and I will be here waiting with open arms to greet them.
Or…
I could simply get up out of this chair and rejoin my squad in the line. Chloe is sitting on the ground. I will go join her. And then I will get my passport stamped, board the bus, ride away in the cramped van and leave my border-crossing building life in the shadow of what could have been.
We will meet again one day, my little broken blue chair. Or we might not. Either way, I must leave now.
Goodbye.
May you bring other travelers the same comfort you have brought me.
I shan’t e’er forget you.
