Greetings from Karatu! about an hour up the Rift Valley into the Ngorangora Mountains, through red earth and brilliant green, fields of wheat, cut into squares like a puzzle on each side of this good road of asphalt.....just came off the Crater, two days of Safari with Lindsey, so much fun being with her, sharing with her, amazing....
Emails out for two weeks up there somewhere floating around the Universe...but some came through today, welcoming....am thinking a lot of coming home, what that means...met a great couple from BC last night at the campsite, they are travelling for 8 months through East Africa, by local bus, staying in local hotels, amazing journey...he said to me: back home "we have everything and yet we have so little, and here, they have so little, but yet they have everything"...I know what he is saying. Here, people are joyful to say hello each time in greeting, and with the little Swahili i have learned i can keep the good mornings going for a good minute or so,...the local people stopping for ages, five or ten minutes just to say hello and catch up....People care about what each other are doing here, really care....the interest and joy is in each exchange. Despite despair, there is always a sense of happiness just to be with each other here, just to be alive..death is around every corner.....the little four year old i wrote about positive, staying with her grandmother in Handeni last month died a few weeks ago, I just learned.
This in not unusual, and is received with a sense of honest sadness, the information reported, and then an almost 'oh well' and moving on.....I was disheartened, but as they say, what can you do?
Age...those of a certain age are respected, enjoyed, consulted and totally integrated into this society..it is unthinkable to them when we relate how our aging feel invisible in our youth oriented society, how we put elderly into homes where sometimes no one visits except on Christmas, birthday, holidays...they simply can't imagine....the society is at ease with everyone, from babies and children up through elders and ancients.....not just Masai, but as far as I can see the African people everywhere i have travelled..It is not unusual to see a child raised by a sister and her family, its mother unable to keep it herself.....it just moves on...I have been asked to take home several chidren, and one masai woman handed me her baby as I admired it, saying here, if you want her, please, take her with you...
So my Elia at the orphanage....it would be a matter of a week or so for formal adoption that's it..but I am told the situation is very different upon arriving at the Toronto airport...Canadian visas are difficult to obtain, and not done hastily, which is probably a good thing in the long run. Adopting a seven year old would be wonderous in many ways, and also challenging in others, needless to say, but being here the problems and issues of this seem small in comparison with the greatness of it. That is what i am thinking now..today!
Lindsey leaves Saturday...then i head out to a new district Kerogue, s of Moshi snuggled deep into the mountains...we have a project with four villages there, dealing with the Allanblackia plant which produces oil for margerine which is colestrol free..ICA is hoping to encourage a lot of growing of these plants for sustainable incomes down the road...
After that, up to Kenya for the last week or so where four Canadian/US ICA people have been working all winter, Il Ngwesi, near Nairobi....doing HIV Aids education and voluntary testing..the first such project from start to finish in Africa so far....
And then....leaving on the 12th for Amsterdam, a few days, there is a big new Van Gogh Expressionist exhibition there, and then...home....the babies and Johnny and Shauna are still in my house, of which i am thankful...can't wait to see everyone...
and figure out what in earth this journey has meant to me in perspective.....
Hugs to you all..thanks for keeping this thing going with me!
I intend to sprinkle it with photographs when i get home..
xL