The weekend was ending.

I was excited to get back to Santa Clara, to my bed, to my home.

We bid Ryan goodbye, Sabrina and I, and got on a bus. The first of many. These are two lady volunteers who I didn’t know before service. Ryan lives in a pueblo in the Ixil region (it’s six hours from Sabrina and me) and there are four hours between she and I. So it’s a trek to get to one another and yet, it could be much further. Ryan’s sister is in Peace Corps Africa and says it takes her four days traveling to get to the Peace Corps office. I can get to the Peace Corps office in less than four hours.

There were two spaces left on this bus, one small wooden stool and a ledge that extends from the back of the front seats. The ledge gets hot, too hot to sit on, but there was a cushion on top of it. I wedged myself into this spot and faced the back of the bus, my bags on top of me. Three ladies were squished together on the first bench, myself between them and the sliding door. The lady in the middle took my sleeping bag for me, helping me. The ayudante stood next to the sliding door, right in front of me, with a blank expression: anticipating the next stop. The woman closest to the window and furthest from me had a little baby in her lap, maybe 4 months old. When he started to cry (not because of me this time), I said: “kat bisontaj” which is “don’t be said!” in K’iche’. I know that the regional dialect in the Ixil region (pronounced e-sheel) is also called Ixil, but the only dialect I know is K’iche’. And you gotta use what you know.

The ladies began to chuckle. The laughter was confirmation that they understood what I was saying. The majority of this bus was surprised, curious, tickled or entertained.The most passive response was a curious stare. We were stacked next to each other like sardines but I was as enamored with the women’s traje as they were with my speech. In my pueblo there is not a típico hair style or accessory, but here the women wrap their long hair in a long, thin woven fabric and tie their woven hair around their heads. These decorative balls of thread, brightly colored, adorn their heads like crowns, for the queens they are. It’s beautiful. Correction: there is a típico way of styling hair in Santa Clara, a type of ribbon they use, but it’s really only observed on historical celebrations. The little kids dress-up or the middle schoolers wear the style for cultural school assemblies. But for everyday use, no hay.

While I was on the clown wagon, I pulled out my other shake and bake K’iche’ jokes: “Kintzukuj utz achi pero maj..!” (I am looking for a good man but there aren’t any!) Achi kawaj wa y ne (“Men want babies and tortillas”- another crowd pleaser). “Utz re ta’am” I hear one say to the other. “She really knows it…” I said: “Maj ne. K’ash dar a luz..” And then that started more questions: “You don’t want babies?” And I say: “Ni kawaj taj Nan, k’ash.” “I don’t want them, it hurts too much (giving birth).” This is so shocking to them that it’s hilarious. They have babies, they have grand babies Women who don’t want babies don’t make sense. They are not “really women.” And here comes this gringa speaking dialect saying she wants no babies. Send this woman on Chavo del Ocho.

Before you know it the lady in the middle, a Nan, was holding my hand. She was staring ahead, out of the windshield of the bus and I was looking back at the robotic ayudante, watching the road retrospectively. We were holding hands for minutes. My hand in hers. This stranger lady and I, who immediately accepted me because I spoke a dialect that kind of sounds a little like her dialect but really nothing at all alike. Holding hands.

Eventually she moved her hand to pat my arm emphatically while we spoke. I took mine back, but it looked like she was going to reassume our hand-holding had I left it there. What on earth? To be loved by people for trying to be like them, even as a complete outsider. Even as an outsider from a country whose presence here is fractious and evermore so with the question of immigration. Still, we held hands, no words between us. It was magic and innocent and it was something like kindness, warmth and love. The Hi.

Sabrina and I braved the rest of the routes until we parted at my stop, Kilometro Cuarenta y Ocho. We coughed up cash to each new ayudante.

During the four hours we compared notes on service, laughed. With each curve and jostling bump and jolt of public transportation on undeveloped roads we got to know each other still, even though we’ve known each other now for two years. You get to know a person through strange glimpses through window slats in Peace Corps. You think you might know them but your idea can shift dramatically with new bits of information and all the mindless gossip shared across the group. We dreamed about one day going to Africa. We talked about how much money we think that would cost and how much time (a month, we agreed) we would want to spend. I told Sabrina Peace Corps is the first time I didn’t feel young anymore. I feel my age, my blossoming start to wrinkles, my not-youth We talked about service, what it has meant for us, and we shuddered and shrugged over the looming question mark of The Future.

And I wonder, but am not sure, if that is the last time I will have A Date with Sabrina. Yes, I will see Sabrina again before her COS (close of service). But what if Africa is just a thing that women dream when they are on a busted camioneta flying through the hills of Quiché to shield themselves from goodbye? I am not saying it’s not possible, Africa, or any other trip. But I am not saying that it is certain. And that is my Lo. The uncertainty of friendships after Peace Corps.

I held hands with a stranger woman and will never see her again. As for Peace Corps friends, TBD.