The dismantling of the Global Village has slowly begun. Each booth that was carefully designed and constructed to display items to full effect is now being removed panel by panel. Each poster and picture hung up with care is being taken down and stacked up. Volunteers are packing up and taking down what they can without making the place seem too empty too soon.

Delegates and visitors have just a few more hours of formal sessions, networking and , exploring the cultural center of the International AIDS Conference. A speaker from one of the session rooms can be heard on a microphone, his words not quite distinguishable, but, I assume, he is attempting to capture his experience in a few summarizing words.

The final day consists of exchanges of business cards, the closing ceremonies, and hurried good-byes,. AIDS 2006 has come to an end. “Overwhelming” would be the key descriptive word for the week. The walls of the Youth Pavilion are almost bare. A few lone pictures remain, waiting for their owners to come and claim them. The chairs have been stacked and the usual crowds have dwindled.

Next week, delegates will be back at work in their home countries. Back to the routine of daily living, back to the realities of families, organizations, and everything else that they had left. While a week usually does not feel like a long time, the past five days have been so packed full of events and information, that a month could have passed by and no one would have noticed.

No matter what people’s expectations were, every one of the 25,000 delegates who attended this conference will be bringing something back with them. Some will bring back new ideas and creative energy for their programs. Others will bring back new information and resources. But all of us will bring back new contacts from our time in Toronto – new friends made with the hope of developing new partnerships.