Ophmert, Holland...5:50am, cold but not so nearly as cold as Toronto, raining all day yesterday and grey, the first of this colour i have seen in four months - in AFrica, it is the brightness of light you first notice, the phenomenal clarity in the early morning blasting forth a smile of the day to come.....but here in this land of Merit and Hans and Casey McGlynn my watch remains stuck on African time: ten to 8, two hours ahead of Holland, 8 hours ahead of Toronto - the knob on the right side of the face refusing to budge embedded with months of dust, oil and dirt. I can't get the coffee machine to work; too many buttons, or maybe last night so tired i didn't listen properly; the computer in this technically-unchallenged land swallowed twelve emails yesterday while Merit and I went shopping for presents for the kids.

Happy Valentines day!

Their house is filled with art, theirs and that of Casey McGlynn hung up or tacked onto every wall and surface, covering the caravan trailer that sits outside the living room window, the inside walls, the outside walls. Hans is into fused glass pieces, having just finished a show in collaboration with Casey at the Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto on Dundas Street, still on for another week, I can't wait to go - and Merit, her work changing and developing in leaps since October, so very exciting! It got me going again, charged with that particular kind of passion I haven't felt in some time, I'm anxious to get back to my studio. People have said they couldn't wait to see how my work will change after Africa and I can't either. Other than in the eight or ten workshops I gave in Africa, I barely did any art there except the Sharpie-cartooned versions of elephants, giraffe, cats and lions to amuse the children along the way.

Toronto: this very afternoon and knowing that Johnny and maybe those two fat and smiling babies will be at the airport, 8 months now and I hope not strange with me, and Lindsey and Jim, and Seanna and Ted and sweet darling Sierra who had pneumonia and root canal work over the winter, and Shauna and old Nanuuk whose still amazingly alive. Dinner tonight with salad and bbq salmon in a house with real toilets, hot water and gas stove- it's strange being here even in Holland, a feeling so comfortable, so remembered, so natural as if i have never left - that the whole thing in Africa was a bright, vivid dream and one that i won't forget.

Yesterday, sitting around their table, with cheese, the first in months, remembering and telling stories...Tawanda and I running all over Harare on my last day searching madly for a peanut butter making machine for Mary Mesa, the project organizer of all five high density areas - to supplement her income - supporting her husband, an assistant pastor without salary and two kids she';s trying to keep in school, both primary and secondary charging exhorbitant fees, plus uniform costs, shoes and books. We found one, bright blue, about five feet long and heavy, a manual because of electrical blackouts, - the inflation rate in Zimbabwe now up and over 1000%, it breaks my heart. We carried it for blocks, he at one end, me at the other, and up into the little bus, the matatta, squeezing ourselves awkwardly into our seats and laying this machine sideways across the laps of the people in our row and on to the community centre where we hid it into a cupboard for Mary to discover the next day.

The head of the centre I was to meet cancelled with a note telling me she was unable to come -her grandaughter had died the night before of HIV AIDS and was to be buried that day- a not so uncommon occurance in this country with 18% of its people stricken with this disease, far down from the 32% reported 15 or so years ago when the epidemic was at its highest. Because of sanctions, the anti retro viral ARV medicine is rare here, expensive and prohibitive with people at the bottom suffering the most. We were taken through the narrow laneways and paths of this impoverished area, one-floored shanties jammed together on each side, each one housing four or five families - maybe 16 people - mothers, fathers, grandparents and children - sharing a common kitchen and outdoor squatting hole in the ground as a toilet to douse with water afterwards - houses made from plaster and wood with corregated iron roofing, delapidated but often with plots of maize, corn growning alongside - these street teaming with life. Groups of people sitting and selling tomatoes, corn, vegetables on the side of the road, talking and laughing, children squatting and playing, running after a ball and games all the time chattering non-stop - the whole of Africa a place of community and tribes and clans, each one different from the next, but coming together from early morning all day and into the night outside their homes, because the inside is dark and grim and so often filled with despair - the constant never-ending din of making connection - it never stops.
I am the mzungu, the white person, a rarity in a country, with no tourists, no economy, no jobs, few doctors with no medicine, hospitals and health care facilities breaking down and in decay, with one third of its people emigrating to other countries to make their lives: South Africa, nearby Malowi, Zambia, to Britain, United States and Canada. Each sending money back to support relatives in Zimbabwe, only to have it taxed in half before it reaches their families. The black market system of currency is in full swing here, with the have nots stuck with the government system, the affluent using the other: I got money changed from US to Zim dollars at a beauty salon with the help of a hairdresser who took it upstairs to a travel office for conversion - leaving with huge bundles of paper bills wrapped together with elastic bands, massive wads of useless cash stuffed inside my pack. There is little fuel; oftentimes with no fuel with gas stations closed and dark, empty with no one around; and a few days later when the shortage is lifted, hundreds of cars and trucks lines up down the roadways waiting for hours, sometimes days for fuel. You can't go anywhere without hassle. Without fuel, buses are taken off the road with huge lineups at every stop and the the ones still running, full to the brim, with people sitting on top of each other, the door wide open , spilling, holding on tight and hanging out. Shortages like i have never known: no water, electricity, fuel. Remember a few summers ago during the blackout of August 03, we scrambled for flashlight batteries, candles, bottled water, prepared foods confused and afraid, not understanding what was happening and why, could I imagine living with that on a weekly basis?

Merit has just come in, it's 8:30 now, we leave in an hour - me, i've been lost in this memory. I can't believe it is time! She's downstairs wrapping and packing, my stuff, and expert far better than me, hurrying me along.

One thing before i sign out and get moving, this writing and this blog has carried me through, through the days and weeks and months through good times and some not so great times of this journey, I can't imagine stopping. There are so many more things i want to say, to get down, with so little time for writing along the way.

So i am going to continue this blog for awhile, for as long as it takes to put it all down. I thank you for listening, for writing to me, and for being there....see you in Canada!