Finishing up the last transect walk in Sera. Meeting a flirting donkey foal, hanging out for a while with the animals and the boys and the men in the shade underneath the animal fodder storage sun shelter. Giving them rice and soap. Shaking everyone’s hand.

Picking up Elli. Arriving in Ouaga, at Chez Tess, where the internet works and the bathrooms are clean and there’s no smell of mold anywhere. Taking a shower, washing my hair, wearing a clean dress. Talking Swedish with Elli. Just airing things, with someone who won’t misinterpret.

It’s like there’s a mountain of weight off my shoulders. I feel like myself again. I don’t desperately want to go back home. I wouldn’t mind it, but the urgency I felt just yesterday is gone.

Eating some Swedish candy, the last of the stash that I bought on the airport when coming here. It had been waiting for us here in the fridge at Chez Tess, and now. Celebration. Now also I am basically done with my fieldwork.

There is definitely more to say about that, but tonight: only relief. And a beer and some Gott & Blandat, on the porch at Chez Tess. And wonderful, amazing Elli.

Today was the toughest day I’ve had here. I simply didn’t want to walk. I was sick of waiting for people, sick of having to shake every single grown-up man’s hand, sick of introducing myself and my project, sick of all the millet fields and itchy pieces of dry vegetation that gets stuck in my socks. Sick of constantly sweating, of my dirty trousers, of not being able to communicate except through a translator. Sick of that translator, because he’s the only person I’ve been able to talk to for more than a week. Sick of the sweat rashes and always having to put on sunscreen. Sick of note-taking and photographing and the fucking GPS machine beeping.

Sick of walking.

Who though I ever would get sick of walking?

There wasn’t anything wrong with Firka, the village, as such. They didn’t have any mountains, or amazing old men, or watermelons, but it was just fine. Friendly people, plenty of funny-sounding goats, like most places here. I just didn’t feel it.

But I made it through, walked my 10 kilometers, with one thought ringing in my mind: Once I’m done, when we get back to Kaya, I’ll go to the grocery store and buy chocolate. I DESERVE a piece of chocolate.

So I did. Bought four tiny bars of Cho Cho milk chocolate. Got back to the hotel. Showered. And devoured a bar.

What an anti-climax.

It must be the least chocolate-tasting piece of chocolate that I’ve ever eaten.

Even the most crappy kinds of chocolate, the ones that are only sweet, always have at least an aftertaste of the real thing. But not this. This is only sweet, with an aftertaste of caramel or something thereabouts. Made in Indonesia. What do they know about chocolate? Not much, judging by the chocolate bar I just ate.

Tomorrow is my last day of proper fieldwork. In the afternoon, we’ll pick up Elli in the village where Helena is staying, and then head back to Ouagadougou. Hopefully things go smoothely tomorrow. Hopefully the grocery store by Chez Tess is still open when we get back. Hopefully they still have some of that German chocolate pudding left.

The mobile broadband modem that we bought in the beginning of our trip, but haven’t had to use until now, has turned out to be a joke. It only works in glimpses, enough for me to see that I’ve gotten e-mails, but I rarely manage to open them, and never answer.

The only time it actually works a tiny little bit, is early in the morning, during a window before 6:45. So I get up at 6 to try to communicate with the world outside my fieldworking bubble. Still, this is what shows most of the time:

This morning, though, I managed to answer seven Facebook messages. A huge accomplishment!

Accessing my e-mail still doesn’t work, however. The browser gives up before the ”compose message” page is done loading. I have 64 new messages, mostly newsletters from Add Nature and Amnesty International and SRC, but also some quite important other things. I’ve managed to read some, but not answer. I’ll be replaced as president in NFR (the Science Faculty Student Council at Stockholm University) – a good thing, I’ll probably graduate in June and we need new people in the council, but reading it, I suddenly felt empty. I’ve been involved with student politics business since spring 2010. What else will I do with my time? Start volunteering as a tutor with the Red Cross? Spend more time designing new knitting patterns? The options are endless.

Nakombogo, the third village I walked through in the Kaya area, didn’t have mountains or watermelons, or anything else that made it stick out. But the CVD was an intensely happy man.

He had four wives, four bulls and twenty-one children. Maybe those things are connected. The happiness and wives, bulls and children, I mean.