After processing the news that we could be leaving the next morning, the realization hit me, “Oh crap, I left some stuff at the convent!” I found Matthew and asked him to take me back that night to retrieve the few things I had stored in the staff house. Realizing that there was no fuel available in town, the staff had begun cutting back on unnecessary trips, and one of the three vans sat nearly empty of fuel. Luckily, Matthew also wanted to grab a few more things from his room in the schoolhouse, so he agreed.

We drove back along the bumpy road home. I sat forward with my phone up to the windshield trying to capture how changed the landscape was in picture form. The telephone poles were still leaning, the road’s pavement separated from the grass in long cracks. We crossed over patche...

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