Because everybody hates a tourist.

Every so often, you wonder how much impact you have as a volunteer, or just what your impact truly is. Beyond ‘work’ as we consider it on development projects, a large part of our job description is community integration. We become a part of our communities, we make friends. But when it’s time to leave, the fact remains that we do indeed get to do just that, leave. Emotions run high, and change day to day from happiness, gratitude, pride, and nostalgia, to sadness, loneliness, and a rather large amount of guilt. The guilt stems from any number of things; maybe you feel like you could have done more, tried harder. Mostly, though, it’s because you get to leave.

I’m not going to make much more comment, except that I’ve been humming this song a lot lately.