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It’s been ten years...

Almost ten years ago to the day I sat in this very spot. Also on my way back from celebrating my cousins birthday in Bergen. But the difference being I’d just moved back to Norway two days earlier, and was a little more dazed.

Ten years.

I remember walking to my gate in Fortaleza. My face red and blotchy from the tears of saying goodbye, and glimpsing through a rare window into the main airport the group of friends-turned-family waving another goodbye as I walked past them. I was so sad to be moving from the place that had been home for the past 6+ years, and yet the sadness in a strange way fuelled thankfulness. Thankfulness for the time I got to live there, and proof that the relationships built went deeper than surface level.

Ten years. It still feels so recent, and yet 10 years of living away.

It feels like an appropriate moment to stop for a moment and reflect. Fortaleza, Brazil. The amazing privilege of becoming part of the lives of so many people I met on the streets, in the slums and in the youth prisons; and them filling up space in my heart as I got to know them as so much more than just their circumstances. And the last ten years hearing news that some of them are now husbands and fathers, working and having a life of future and dignity. Others, sadly, are no longer with us, most of them ending up not surviving the consequences of their choices.

Brazil marked me. It was a part of me becoming who I am today. And I am thankful that part of my heart belongs there.

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