It takes a village indeed

The past days have been very hectic, as you can imagine. Lots of preparation, in all aspects imaginable. There's been little sleep, lots of doing. Here I am now, waiting for my connection to Kigali. I've made it this far, thanks to various support systems. Anne, our program's travel agent, has been exceptional, going above and beyond to get me here. Thank you, Anne!

At work, I've done everything to summarize and present my generative user research work, which has been well received. It was important to me to not leave my work halfway through. Since then, my fabulous teammates have already taken some of the next steps from the research. Thank you, team!

On the CSC side, we've had the support of an entire team for the past 3 months. Both within the company and from the NGO that has been doing all the legwork to make our projects and stay in Kigali possible. Thank you, CSC leadership and CSC mentors! Thank you, DOT!

Back home, hubby has been amazing, doing everything to help me for this experience, even though deep down, he'd rather I stayed home with the family. Since baby was born, I had been the one bathing him, mostly because daddy was not confident handling a tiny wriggly slippery body. Over the past several weeks though, hubby has mustered the courage and taken over that duty (I mean, that pleasure). And now, LO (little one) probably doesn't remember the days when mommy did it. They both seem to have fun and enjoy it :) Daddy has created a calendar where he's color coded the dates by the cities (or air) I'd be in. LO gets to place a sticker on the calendar each day. Thank you for everything, hubby!

Stay, mommy!

LO was sad when he got home, and mommy wasn't there. But his face lit up when he saw mommy on the phone. Maybe we can get through this... :)

Family, friends, and neighbors have offered to help in whatever ways they can. Preschool teachers have told us not to worry about LO. Of course, as parents, we can't help but worry. It probably won't end even when he has little ones of his own :P (Wouldn't we be bad parents if we didn't? ;)) Thank you, family, friends, neighbors, and teachers!

There's always so much more I wish I could have done. To make the next 6 weeks easier on everyone, especially at home. But at some point, you learn to realize that they can manage very well without you (though I'd be sad if LO doesn't miss me a tad :P). When it comes to LO (and hubby), I'm always reminded of the caterpillar's story.

On this note, I should probably get some shuteye -.-

#ibmcsc rwanda