As the weeks have gone by working at UCC, I’ve gotten to know my two fifty-child classes quite well; their dynamics, the names, the teacher’s teaching styles and how each have chosen to interact with me. School has become both a source of great joy and pure laughter and also a source of frustration with myself and others. But the relationships brought out of it have been unexpected and truly unique. Far from just being greeted enthusiastically by all the children every single time we meet or they see me (including when I walk by a classroom to go to the kitchen or the washroom), my lunch time breaks walking home are spent with a group of my students walking with me, sometimes fighting for my hand to hold (even as we sweat profusely), or me supervising when they try to climb over dangerous rocks. Simply said, my walks home for lunch are never dull and are sometimes filled with short melodramas and chasing kids up and down the rocky paths. There are many moments that can never be put into words. But of one of these developments built a relationship with a kid in P1 and started with no language and just smiles, actions and intentions. This five or six year old boy, Christian, in primary one class (one of the classes I don’t teach) would always walk with me and Abigaelle (my host sister who is in middle class) home along with his younger brother Yvince (also in middle class). But one day in the afternoon I noticed Christian outside at the front of UCC (the main building/community centre part that is separate from the school) playing by himself and seemingly waiting for someone to take him home. I know he knows the way but he had stayed long after school to wait. I saw him and he waved at me with the sweetest smile and I went to ask him if he was waiting for me to go. He nodded and I immediately told my other colleagues I would be back after I walked him home. We would walk in a comfortable silence hand in hand that felt like home. Every lunch we still walk home together and we would play or say some Kinyarwandan, but usually there are no words ever needed, just to be walk and be together with his friends. It has been good because he showed me where he lived one time and brought me to meet his grandma, father and uncle and I was able to bring him home safely when he cut his toe on a rock one time. I will truly miss the easy way we can interact and the unfiltered acceptance we have for one another; something that is not usually easy to come by.