HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!
hI! wishing you all a great loving day!!...just hitched a ride up the mountain to Kiratu this morning with a guy from Norway and his driver who is taking him into the Safari routes with a camera to bring home pictures for his travel agency - we ran into a huge tribe of baboons loping along all over the road, big huge ones, babies, families making their way from one side to the other...Cows, goat, people on bikes, foot, wagons, everything along these roads, beautiful red sand, green lush trees interspersed here and there, on each side as we wide our way up.. it's been raining hard everyday now, the Big Rains have come,which is great to ward off pending drought, rains which beat down hard for about an hour and then run away, leaving once again blue skies and lots of sun. gorgeous..
Been incredibly busy, couldn't get through the blog network to write last week, so I sent Ted a big long email to copy into my blog, but i don't think he was able to, such is the frustration! will try to remember it all..
Where to begin???
Maybe starting from now and moving backwards..just finished a three day workshop in Mto Wa Mbu, with Charles facilitating 20 Masai leaders,chiefs, plus government people from tribal villages, Muslim govt reps, plus Afrikan, it was an incredible group of people - all leaders in their communities coming together to understand in detail the Hiv Aids crisis, for the very first time. Up until now, Charles has been training youth leaders, students, but never has he worked with elected official before in an official group such as this. About 20 people, some dressed in Masai traditional clothing, mostly men, maybe 5 women, sitting in a large U learning about every aspect of the Hiv Aids crisis: what causes Hiv Aids? protection, all about condoms, volunteer testing, and finally councelling....traditional tribal taboos, beliefs, sexual conduct which abounds rampantly in the Masai communities starting from a very young age, so much to talk about, where to begin. Masai people don't think they can contact Hiv aids, although many of their community have died from it...they believe simply that they have been bewitched. They try to cure the disease with Masai traditional remedies, which work for most other diseases, and which can cure some of the repercussions of Hiv Aids: pneumonia, bronchitis, tb, bleeding etc. - but never the virus. They do cure these outside diseases, but only for awhile, then they come back, and often with a horrible vengence, much worse than before. The discussions were lively, filled with laughter, lots of questions, answers. It is a huge challenge,working with this kind of a community who for thousands of years have been practicing a sexual form of expression reaching all aspects of their customs: interlaced into every celebration, from warrior play, from infertility solutions, from multiple wives and partners, from the practice of widows being passed along to her husband's brothers....The mark of a successful Masai man is the number of cows and goats he has. The more livestock, the more wives he needs to look after them, the more children she needs to help with the chores, and on it goes. Masai warriors, men called Morans ranging in age from 12 up to about 25 spend their days buying selling, auctioning the livestock, protecting the bomas, the villages and playing with the girls. When they do get married, wives are shared..as long as the men are of the same agement as the husband, or, in other words, that the men have had their circumcism ceremony at the same time. After the wedding night another from the agement group can feel free to come by the wife's hut, stab his spear into the ground outside to show that he is inside, and go about his business. If the husband comes along he must cough discretely to let them know he is in the vicinity and move along.

Obviously, this sharing of women is a huge problem with the spreading of Hiv Aids. and one that will be very difficult for the Masai culture to shift, or convince their members to change. In addition, babies are born without hygiene, water, anescetic or gloves; circumcism ceremonies are performed with hundreds of young men, with the same blade, without hygiene. For three days, every detail was discussed in Swahili, with lots of questions, answers, laughing, disbelief, intensity. The most shocking part of the agenda was when a wooden phallic penis was brought out and set on the table in front of the head chief of the meeting, a huge man, draped in blue and red checked sheets perched on two white plastic chairs set together to hold his great girth. He couldn't believe his eyes! Then the tribal woman next to him stood up and pulled a condom onto it, showing them how to use it probably for the first time! Oh my gawd! I can't describe the look on their faces - the laughter, the embarassment, the hoots and then the hiding their heads in their hands, it was incredible to witness...I had filmed the whole meeting, and have this on tape as well. It was a moment i won't forget!

Charles brought in a man living with Hiv Aids positive on the medicine Arvs. This brought a solemn seriousness to the group, wide eyed, listening, actually to have someone standing strongly in front of them talking so openly about this disease, about how he contacted it, about how the ARVs are helping him, listening intently to him about his experience, his advice on how to prevent..the importance of going into their communities as leaders, to being tested and to teaching their people of this disease - to use the dreaded condoms.
It was a very successful hugely informative meeting...
And now it is up to the leaders to take this information back into their lives...will they do this?
Masai are known for agreeing, smiling, learning, understanding and then going back to their communities and deciding amongst themselves to disregard everything, to not go along with anything they have heard.. But this time Charles has posted a few close friends within the community to stand up and agree with this new information the chiefs will bring in...to push it along, to help bring it into fruition, so we shall see....
Last week three women from the states arrived, representatives from Rotary, to witness for themselves some of the Hiv Aids and water projects bring done in these parts. We took them out to two Masai villages and met with the Hiv aids community groups..sitting in a grove of trees in the middle of a forest on four benches facing each other, men and women, young and old, talking about hiv aids...Charles had trained them a few months ago. These people are pioneers in this work, brave to be out there talking and teaching about this disease, bypassing the stigma of it, and pushing forth, traveling by foot from one mud hut to the next, talking with families together about the disease, spreading the word...speaking about their difficulties not being able to reach bomas so far away, where it would take sometimes a day and a half to walk there, to talk, and then to come back....the women left $700. which we agreed would be used to buy bicycles for these people, and a camera to record their work. We were celebrated later with the leg of a goat, roasted and slung onto a spear stuck into the ground into the centre of a lovely wreath of green leaves. A Masai pulled out his long sharp sword hidden beneath the folds of his dress, and sliced the goat meat into small pieces offering each one to us, round and round until it was finished. Delicious. On the way out, we saw a herd of giraffe in the distance, over fifty of them together, moving slowly along the horizon, one after the next in a line, their long graceful necks, heads facing the same direction, unusual, converging for a meeting of sorts?...zebra, Thompson gizelles in groups along the road across tundra, a wide gorgeous sunset....the end of yet another great day....oh yes I love it here....
I mentioned the camera a while back, well Jim and Lindsey and the wonderful Mark from Henry's downtown used camera outlet...i need to tell you that all is working well and wonderfully, amazingly. I am definately technophobic, and with all this new equipment it has had me in a state of suspended agitation, putting it out of my mind as much as possible, all the while keeping the thing in its big black too falshy bag, the tell tale tripod at its side...hidden behind a curtain in my room with the black suitcase wedged in front of it...But with that workshop, i had to bring it out. there are sixteen pieces of equipment i have to worry about, and have to remember what goes where, and what for. It is not easy for me. But i have to say that it worked. And once up and in operation, the camera securely attached to the tripod, i am able to slowly move it about, up and down, back and forth, and although Lindsey said that to zoom in was passe and a bit amateurish, face it, i am an amateur, no getting around it, so zoom i did, and do. It is exciting to learn something so new to me...and one of the exciting thing about being in Africa. The need to force yourself to stretch, and learn, and try to be open, to understand, to figure out dialects, to ask questions sometimes over and over until the answers come clear. It is a stretch, believe me. Physically I am okay, I was sick with flu the whole first week, during a lot of those field visits, meetings, but was told by a doctor to keep going, to drink lots of water and let it pass through, not easy but necessary...doctor's orders...
am feeling much better now, lots of yoga, in fact i did a couple of sessions during the workshop described above. got them to stand up push their chairs away, and did a lot of work around the shoulders, arms, legs. They loved it...I am also called upon to give my ideas about some of the things being discussed: condoms was a big topic, they were not in any way interested in using these things...I told them that neither were we! Neither is anyone, but when it is necessary it must be done...I am going to move onto another post, there is a scary signal here which says the blog cannot be conected to the post, pray!!

Hi..second post today! so if you want to make sense of this, read the one underneath this one..i was typing merrily along when a notice appeared that i had 37 seconds to go before that whole thing erased!! Yikes! and welcome to blogland Tanzania.....electrical blackouts, machines turning off for no reason at all, keys sticking..so here goes, where was I?
Masai girls education fund...that is where i was, trying to describe the complexities of the selection committe of Masai, Charles and me toward which kids will continue school...all the secondary schools are boarding.i wondered why, especially with this culture walking 10-20 kilometres a day easily..was told that unless they board, they won't continue school. They go home on a visit, are needed to collect water, look after cows, goats, fetch firewood, look after the little ones, and help their mothers create homes of cow dung. Once home, teachers, headmistresses have to come and fetch them back to school. So boarding is a necessity. The school i visited on Saturday was just built this year, made of concrete blocks with a grass and corregated tin roof, open windows. It had five classrooms- two being used for dormitories, boys, girls, the other three as classrooms/offices.
The kitchen which fed an astounding and astonishing 120 children was a small lean-to outside and next to the school complex, about 12 foot by 12 foot, a fire burning outside with a big pot broiling ugali atop. The toilet an enclosed outhouse behind the school, a hole in the ground. The govt of Tanz. is building hundreds of schools such as these in every ward, intent on furthering the education. The girls dorm was stacked to the ceiling with over thirty bunk beds, jammed in a foot away from each other - the girls curious, laughing, wanting their picture taken..outside a choir practicing their singing, with a large group of students hanging on to each note, singing along..it was lively, fun..and on a saturday when there is no school..

What else...so many things...it is all the same, familiar to me, the streets, the people, remembering Lindsey and I from last year, shouting CANADA!! across the road, these boys selling Masai beads, carvings, beseeching you to buy if you will, but i tell them over and over, I am not a tourist..I will buy things but not now, maybe later, but not if they won't leave me alone with this selling...and with a huge smile, they remember..oh yes, remember ME! they say, and how is your daughter, mtoto....Lindsey, everyone want to know...
SwaHili...what little i learned last year...i am remembering now...and adding new words as best i can..it is difficult as there is no connection between the words and phrases in Swahili, or for that matter, in Masai, another difficulty for me...to Canadian, French or Italian..it is like grabbing sounds put together out of the air and trying to remember them..a huge learning curve all of it, for me.
I remember the roosters in the morning, the Muslem call to prayer at four am mournfully beseeching their people to get up and leave the warmth of their beds, come to prayer, and to the wives over the loud speaker, to unleash their hold on their husbands and let them go....I remember the goats along the road playing with the children untethered, the children shouting JAMBO! to me, sometimes "where is my pen", or "where is my money!" out from cracked broken walls of homes made of mud, grass, sticks, whatever they can find.
I visited the Orphanage on Saturday, before the Masai villages...a quick visit while waiting for Charles to finish his work..i walked the mile down the road past the women selling bananas in a long row..i bought two bunches, heavy to give to the kids. Last year, there were 10 little ones there; this year 35..it is astonishing. on Saturday there were 22 there, running in age from 3 to one boy who is 12...some i recognized, alot were new....The orphanage is on the edge of town, with a big dusty yard out front, this year someone has put up a swing, but other than that, a few benches and little to do. There is a reception room with an office.The harvest table we had made last year was in that room, no benches, chairs. to the back there is a courtyard where a woman is washing clothes by hand, hundreds of pieces, hanging them up in a long line stretching from the reception area to the back fence of the 'complex'. Two other small rooms lead off from the courtyard. One for the boys, the other for the girls, with beds and matresses lined up inside, the kids sleeping side by side along the width of the beds, or on the floor on the matresses. It is impossible to describe. THere are no toys...the food is limited, big pots of vegetable stews, ugali, chunks of bread sometime. I will give more on that later...
They have purchased or have been given land to build a bigger orphanage...they have bought the materials they tell me, but have not financially been able to build. The site is a long way from Mto Wa Mbu, isolated, and not near the public schools...Charles does not think this is a good idea, and i tend to agree with him..but the director of the Orphanage was not there Saturday - more to learn in the days to come.

Seanna, my daughter and my wonderful grandaughter, Sierra are coming in March to work in the Orphange with the kids. It will be an incredible experience for both of them, especially dear Sierra who is 7. She has travelled to Mexico, visited schools in small villages with local kids...and has also played with kids from all over the world in Seanna's ArtHeart, the Art Centre in Regent Park she created 16 years ago. So this will not be entirely foreign to her, but i am sure it will be an incredible stretch!

Tonight three Rotarian women from the US will visit MtoWaMbu for a couple of days, to visit the Masai villages and the projects the ICA in Tanzania are doing, first hand: the hiv aids workshops, homecare, the respiration project where they have installed 150 chimneys into the Masai mud huts with proper firepaces for cooking, the micro financing especially for women in small business, the hiv aids positive groups in the community.

I've been down the last few days, headache, tired, aching all over, but Dr. John who hooked a ride with us from MtoWaMbu to Arusha, told me not to take to bed; to get up, walk, drink lots of water, exercise..it will go away soon enough. I've been holed up in my little room since Sunday under my mosquito netting, with a flashlight reading What is the What! an incredible book about the Lost Boys of Sudan... but had to drag myself up to go to Arusha today with Charles, he for a meeting and me to buy paint for my art workshop next week....They dropped me off at some internet cafe five hours ago...I had never been there, and quite wanted to spend the day in the Patisserie....I am losing my mind! Did i write this to you already, or maybe to someone on an email...sorry if i did..but after a mile or two of walking, trying to remember, i found this place....happily, and feel so much better...
Got to run...or stop this for awhile...

I hear there is a big snowstorm back home..but now it is warmer, melting, great...
Miss you all, it is a strange thing, being so far away, and yet feeling close with family, friends at home...and yet, here too, i am making a family as well far away from home...be well...take care! this blog doesn't accept emails..so if you'd like to write, please send to lynnconnell@sympatico.ca...I promise to write back!
have a great day..or night! whatever it is...and someone, please let me know about those elections! today, it s super Tuesday and here, it is just another day....
hugs..Lynn

GREETINGS FROM TANZANIA!
ARUSHA TOWN...about an hour from Kilimanjaro...and two hours east of MtoWaMbu...HOT...not too humid today, but very hot!! Hi everyone...my first post from Africa...drove into Arusha this morning early, Charles dropped me off at an internet cafe i didn't know, so i set out following my nose, this lone white woman with a black backpack and purse securely dangling off my shoulders, winding slowly through dusty noisy crowded, alive!streets, flanked by stalls selling everything on high sidewalks, cobblestoned streets, trucks weaving in and out, cars, black exhaust, music, a kaleidescope spinning...sewing machines lined up along the side of the road in a long row stretching a block, each a treddle with a man working, sewing suits, blouses, shirts...another on the sidewalk with leather, making shoes, shops for kitchen, furniture making, cosmetics, clothing, pharmacy - of course everything we have at home, but different here..JAMBO HABARI!! everyone saying hello as you pass, can I help you? but i sort of know where i am going...it is all coming back, the huge bustling bus station half as big as a football field right in the middle of Arusha...take a left, for a few blocks then a right, i know there is an English bookstore down here, i keep walking, remembering, the sky is grey with sun pouring through...the bookstore, nothing, i peer in the window and see shelves, metal, empty, what a shame, and keep on going....finally this Patisserie Internet Cafe, where they sell sweet little cakes and buns with a line of computers along one end, loaves of bread, eclairs, candies along one wall, little round tables with ice cream chairs, just like home...it is an oasis this place...
Remembering everything..
Charles my project coordinator was at the airport Saturday with his wife Grace...it was incredible to see him again, luckily, i thought i might have to make my way to Mto Wa Mbu myself on local busses, all those bags overstuffed and overweighted down with heavy art supplies, my digital video film camera with all the attachements in a big black bag i must cling at all times to my body, oh I curse and wonder why i brought it, but i will get used to it, the security around it, and how to use it! a cacophany of batteries, lens, cables, rechargers, lens caps, boom mics...and a few clothes...travelling light would be easy without all the work stuff...but this is what i am here for. It is easier than lastyear, where i knew not where i was going or what i am getting myself into...I am so very tired...8 hour to Amsterdam, a great day and night with Merit and Hans and on to Nairobi another 8 hours away...WE land two hours late, with only one hour left to catch my flight down to Kilimanjaro..my bags are not going through. I have to run through immigration, they insist on keeping my passport as i get through, wait seemingly forever for those hopeless bags, pile them onto a cart, and beg a porter to help me please...we find an elevator i would never have found myself, with 15 minutes to go before takeoff, rushing to the boarding pass table with a hundred other people, waiting, the computers are down, things are at a standstill, i am panting! On to the gate to board, without a pass, but with this incredible man Peter leading the way who is telling me that Nairobi is absolutely safe, peaceful, no problems here for sure, he insists, but i ask: how about Kibera, the huge slum i travelled through lastyear, where just a month ago, and days ago...thousands poured out of with flaming sticks, stones and guns, hundreds slaughtered, what about Kibera? It is safe, peaceful now, he says as we reach the gate..manually process me through, my bags are taken but for the big black one with the camera..and i am let onto the plane, minutes before departure.
I have been told that over 300,000 people have cancelled holiday, safari and business flights to Kenya this last month, reeking havoc with tourism..and bleeding down into Tanzania the country to the south, where people have refused to go as well..
On to Mto Wa Mbu...to the little guest house i stayed in last year, home away from home, but this time with a tv in each room encased in a heavy metal cage with a big padlock - I am not impressed, these televisions, until i learn i may be able to access CNN at 8 each morning for an hour in English of course...the station is controlled by the two people who manage this place..but without Swahili i have yet been unable to communicate my need to watch this one station for one hour, at least tomorrow morning, eight hours ahead of you, to check into the US primaries...I learned by accident of McCain winning in Florida..and of Edwards pulling out of the Democratic race...dying to know what's happening today, Super Tuesday...
Please write to me all the news! lynnconnell@sympatico.ca

Dinner everynight at Charles and Grace's home..wonderful hospitality..with their two little boys, David who is almost 2 and Charles nephew Elvis who he has adopted, his sister unable to care for him on her own...banana plantain stew with small pieces of beef, rice, a spinich chard like vegetable, those little silver fish i can't eat which make my stomach rumble, from last year, ugali -the national dish, made of corn, maise cooked up like a flour in water paste which you ball up in your right hand and with your thumb make a sort of spoon to dip into veggies and stews and sauces, scoop up and eat the whole thing...deliecious...
My stomach is okay so far.
Day one..Charles took me out to two Masai villages where we worked last year. Salela and Engaruka...they are one and two hours away from MtoWaMbu village, across dry potted semi roads, down gullies of rock into riverbeds now dry from drought, through herds of cows, goats, Masai children with sticks guiding the animals to pasture, hundreds of them; we toss bottles of water out the window of the heavy red
toyota pickup as we speed by. Giraffes, zebra spotted here and there not too far away across dry red soil tundra. Masai bomas, mud huts built by their women from cow dung in clusters of six or more, surrounded by fences made of sharp sticks woven together to keep wild animals out....children almost naked playing in the dirt. Masai men, tall, lean, neck, ears, lobes with huge holes the size of loonies, decorated in beads of all colours, draped in red and blue sheets of plaid, striped, patterned each one tied and hanging at the shoulders, the women in bright blue, with beads, wide circular white necklaces, each adornment reflecting their position within their tribe: married, grandmother (yeyo), single....I think...

I learned so much about these incredible people last year..their customs, their lives. Since coming home last February i have been making speeches and presentations with vivid pictures describing the Africa i saw and experienced..to Rotary, Proxis groups, Steven Lewis Grandmother groups, school classrooms, senior citizen homes, churches...fundraising on a number of issues, cows/sheds for Hiv aids people in Handeni, the Blessed Comfort orphanage in MtoWaMbu, bikes for home care workers in Zimbabwe and as well, raising money to help send Masai girls to secondary school. Thank you so much to everyone who supported these projects...even though the needs are immense, every little bit counts so much...

I am here this year to help set up the complex system of education funding with the Masai:selection, criteria, interviewing, photographing and monitoring of the children. Each village has an Education Committee..I met them on Saturday and will meet again with them tomorrow and Thursday..of five people who set the criteria to choose which children will continue their schooling..Primary school is free in Tanzania but the families are responsible for paying for uniforms,shoes and books $65in our money, a sum which mAny families can not afford. Only the very wealthy get to continue into secondary school. But with this Education Funding Program, kids who want to continue their education and who have made the passing grades out of primary school,must apply, in writing, of why they want to continue. All names are put up on a bulletin board for the whole community to see, preventing the sons and daughters of wealthier families, in fact any family who owns a cow or goat, from applying. Students are chosen on the basis of their needs, their desire and ability to learn. ICA Tanzania has sponsored five kids at this point.
WE from Canada have raised enough funds for another 15 kids to go, at this point.
i am told it costs $320.Canadian, per child for the first year; the other three years will be a lot less expensive as beds, desks, uniforms are already purchased. We will be working this week to establish a budget which will include all four years.

On Saturday we visited two of the four Masai villages we will be working in; Selela a huge Masai market in full swing, women sitting on the red sand selling vegetables: carrots, lettuce, corn, potatoes, maise..wracks of beads, Masai sheets of all colours, patterns...shoes, sandals made from black rubber tires, bright blue plastic bags twisted in round circles creating rows of bowls with 3" rims each one holding a wide array of spices, herbs...little children running around, following me, touching my white skin...and on to Engaruka, another village about an hour away. In each town sprinkled here and there with mud huts, chickens and goats moving along beaten-down paths amongst children playing, adults hand in hand, hanging out in groups, everyone pretty curious, we visited the elected council members first to announce our presence. Everyone knows Charles. He has worked tirelessly in these villages over the past three years, but I am a newcomer, and thus needed to be properly and formally introduced to the chiefs, council members, governing body. You sit down in a little corregated tin hut with mud floors and a big desk, behind which sit the council members. Much talk in Swahili, introductions, the shaking of hands, the signing of their visitor book, more talk, all in Swahili...
My project is focused on sending Masai Girls to school. This was determined last year by the Masai people Charles has been working with, and endorsed by the director of ICA Tanzania, Doris, who lives in Moshi, a small city about 5 hours east of Mto Wa Mbu...But this year there is much discusion of whether only Masai girls should be selected.
In this culture, Masai girls are kept home by their families for engagement around the age of 8 or 9, sometimes earlier..by ensuring their engagement and forthcoming wedding, they are also ensured a dowry of cows or goats, the number depending on the wealth of the parents of the Masai warrior who seeks her hand. The families generally do not see the use of education for girls, and often not for boys as well, as they are needed to tend the cows and goats owned by the family. I asked Charles about whether this project is really needed, or wanted, or useful to the Masai people; it is a confusion for me. But in his opinion, these customs are increasingly dangerous to the life and future of the tribe, with the hiv aids pandemic running rampant, and yet secret in this community.
So, this is something we have to consider in this Masai Girls Education Fund project: we were told on Saturday that many children need to make use of this money, not just Masai girls..there are of course the Masai boys, and then there are other children not of the Masai tribes living and needing in this community..or in some instances a Masai woman gives birth to a child with a father who is Somali, who has left the family. She is alone now with her mixed blood child, without means or family to help. What about these children? What about children who are orphaned, without parents, who are living with grandparents, or maybe without even relatives to look after them...there are so many...so for us, so many things to determine..to focus on...to decide...
Charles says it is up to me; but i say, who am i to understand the complexities of this issue amongst so many others...my gawd! I do know that Masai women have the status less than the cattle; I understand then why the elders wish to include Masai boys in our project. I also understand the dowry needs. But these kids that i have met and worked with last year in my art workshops are so keen to learn themselves, are dying to go on to read and write, to learn and speak English...to become something much more than where they may be heading with traditional custom..so it is a huge dilema

LEAVING TODAY...
Seanna and Sierra, age 7 are coming over on March break to visit me, and to work in the Blessed Comfort orphanage a few blocks from where we will be staying. Last year there were ten little kids there, aged 3-7...we bought them clothing, sheets, towels, had a dining room table and benches made, toys....they had nothing, absolutely nothing, except two old mattresses, one for the boys one for the girls, to sleep on, lined up one by one next to each other across the length of the bed....toys..------ I wrote the director a month ago about our coming....

THIS JUST CAME IN!

Forwarded Message
From: Judica Abraham
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:37:58 -0800 (PST)
To: "lynnconnell@sympatico.ca"
Subject: RE: COMING TO TANZANIA!!

Dear lynn.how are you?hoping fine,we are fine also.sory for delaying answer your email but this is due to reasonable reasons. About the plans of our building,we have alread brought the piece of land ,building materials which you will hapen to see the but they are not get to the site due to securty reasons.
About the issue of taking children will also be very happy.
For now children need building even though we have not maneged to do so.
We have 35 children and their ages for boys are from 4yrs to 12yrs.we have 22boys and 13girls.
Thank you very much.may the lord bless you .
Feel welcome and hope see you safe back to afrika
best regards
DIRECTOR
JUDICA MBISE

I'll be at the orphanage on Saturday...will keep you posted!
The sheets are in the washer, the bath full..it's 5am, am flying over to Johnnie's for one last visit with the twins in an hour, and ready to go! Talk soon!

2008...AFRICA...JOURNEY.......on the eve of....
Checking, checking...just to make sure this is still working! Haven't written since July!
HI!
One day to go! More or less ready, not packed yet....but almost done: meds, shots; bank, Creativity Art Retreat business, ready for Marci Lipman (416-346-5511) to take over as of now! Feels great. Kato and Billy moving into Argyle, the car over to Johnny's...list after list, checked off...can barely remember what, where or why...excited! will be once i'm on that plane..a night at Merit's outside of Amsterdam, and then Thursday night, on to Tanzania, via Niarobi. Kenya..am worried about that, but will be at that airport for under three hours- it's a good distance from town so I'm certain it's okay, but things are getting much worse there everyday, big article this morning in the Globe.... then on to Kilimanjaro Airport...may, or may not be picked up. Maybe. Maybe not. Doris, head of ICA Tanzania, and Charles: Mto Wa Mbu ICA project coordinator, swamped with U.S.Rotary visits and projects. So who knows? That's the attitude you have to develop over there, travelling anywhere I have found: no expectations, flexibility, allow the universe to unfold, the mystery of it, it always works out, in some way, and often in a much better way than I could ever have imagined. The Art Retreat runs this way too....a good lesson in life, patience, stop trying to control things, just let whatever happens, happen.....

If they meet me, great..we drive 4 hours to Mto Wa Mbu and start the journey..
If they don't, i grab a cab for an hour over to the bus station in Arusha, find the local bus to Mto Wa Mbu, buy a ticket and 3 hours later, make my way into that little crazy bustling village I loved so much last year. All of this somewhat daunting, but so it begins! Then on to the guest house, with a sign in Swahili nailed outside, the letters of which i copied down carefully to show people where i was staying..only to be met with blank stares! And great caffaws! Ha. "Vacancy"?? This is a guest house! So no I don't know what it is called, but i do remember where it is...and I'm hoping someone has made a reservation there for me this year. That's all...

Why Tanzania? Why back to Mto Wa Mbu...? At first, we thought South Africa, to Johannesburg, where the ICA is run by six guys, all young, working in the high schools in the huge slum of Alexandra, but where a friend of mine's mother was shot dead last summer - plans cancelled. Then it was going to be Kibera, in Nairobi, the slum I travelled through last February - a where thousands poured out the day after the elections in December with bows, arrow, fire and guns, burning shanty, hacking people to death - tribe against tribe, neighbour against neighbour....poverty, extreme horrible conditions, no way to get ahead, no way to live, and nothing to lose - the elections they say was the tip of the iceberg, the catalyst to ignite the festering boil, ready to burst..and it has, terribly.
I decided okay, then, maybe not this year.
But Tanzania came up with a proposal and one that I've been fundraising for all year: the Masai Girl's Education Fund...we have raised enough to send about 20 girls to school, which is incredible. I've commissioned Emely, a grandmother in charge of over 11 children deep in the bowels of Harare Zimbabwe, where the world's highest inflation rages at 9,000%, where Stephanie Nolan wrote that what once a 2 bedroom bungalo was worth, you now could buy, if you couldd find it, one lonely tube of toothpaste, incredibly. Food shortages, no electricity, dirty polluted water, no cooking oil, maize, no food on the shelves, black market, those with money travelling in adjacent countries: Botswana, Zambia to bring food back to sell for anything they ask for on the market, the rich getting richer as always - the poor starving, sick, no hospitals, no fuel, no buses, no employment. It is bleak. I am receiving emails daily from proud people, reduced to asking repeatedly for help, anything...corruption, stealing, lying...i have learned much this year, and can only empathize. I know most of us would do anything, everything, no matter what, to feed our children - we can't judge, we can only pray...

Emely...who makes beautiful batiks, ships them over to me in big plastic bundles at great cost, these pieces I have been selling at my presentations...each one helping Emely, and allowing one Masai girl to go to school for a year, such a win win situation which is really working...and thank you all for supporting this project...we have sent the money over to ICA Tanzania, but at present there isn't a system in place...the Masai community have a selection committee...but there is no interviewing, photographing, and most important I have found, monitoring system...to make sure the girls get to school - Masai girls, women, have less status than the livestock, cows, goats...so, why girls? they might ask...empowerment, skills, knowledge...and yet there is the fine line to walk, I know. I am not going in there to try to alter their culture, but to offer growth hopefully, knowledge, especially re Hiv Aids...a shift, perhaps...is maybe what could happen...
What else, there is their transportation, what kind of school? where? Who sets them up with books, uniforms, bed, dresser, desk...clothing, everything...none of this is in place..so that will be one of the projects i will be working on with the Masai...interesting..not only do I not speak Swahili, but now there will be the additional issue of the Masai language!

I am taking a great digital video camera this time, with good sound, to actually film the process when it is appropriate...I have never done this before, and am both totally excited, and scared out of my mind...the security around this camera will be interesting..plus the technicalities, of which i am just learning, and certainly at this point, am a rank amateur! ICA Canada also would like me to bring back footage of African students talking and showing the Hiv Aids issues from their point of view...so lots to do...and plus, that orphanage i wrote of last year...it is in the same village where i will be stationed...glee!

So on the eve of departure, I wish you all a great winter...back April 04....time to get ready for the art retreat /08.
if you want to write: lynnconnell@sympatico.ca.. There is an internet cafe about an hour from Mto Wa Mbu..love to hear - no news there..last year I didn't know Saddam H. had been hung for over a month after it happened! So what will happen in the US primaries....?? Bon voyage...be well....Lynn

This is impossible..I can't find my way back into writing...i just can't focus...too far away from Africa, too many miles, too many months and in Zimbabwe too many mouths to feed...Zimbabwe, when I was there, last October/November, inflation was high at about 1200%. It was crazy then. Everything was done on the black market; I carried around a sack of paper money, wads of it wound up tightly with elastic bands, bulging from my backpack in the morning, only to have it gone by nightfall. Here in Canada we can't imagine this....but over there, since their President Robert Magawbe established an ab orted form of land reform in 2000, basically by kicking white farmers off their lands and handing out those farms to his cronies, not to the black farmers or farm workers who had been tiling that land all their lives...and soon the land went fallow..this proud country, once called the 'bread basket of all of Africa", supplying surrounding countries with the bulk of their vegetables, fruits, meat, poultry..now lost over 45% of its farms, the remaining ones limping along...He did this to impress rural voters, insisting that once land belonged back to black people life would change for the better, but it hasn't. Thousands of farm workers were forced to leave their families behind in the country and migrate to the larger cities in the hope of finding work. Once proud and with means to feed their families these men threw together makeshift shacks of corregated tin, cardboard, rags - creating a hodge podge slum town in the middle of the capital city of Harare. In 2003 the government, suspecting opposition support seeping into this area, sent brute force in the form of bulldozers much like those we saw in Tiannamon Square, who charged in, crashing down and demolishing this semblance of homes, leaving behind construction piles of torn wood, metal and debris, and 750,000 people out of work and home.

Since then, the economy slipped and slithered out of the hands of the people, inflation rose, and since I left, soared...today it is over an astonishing 9,000% - the worst in the world. As Globe and Mail African correspondent Stephanie Nolan said in an article this morning, this means that a tube of toothpaste, if it could be found on empty shelves today, costs more now than a two bedroom bungalo did only a few years ago. Can you imagine! Last week the government, in their attempt to stop inflation, forced merchants and retailers to cut prices of their produce in half, causing desperate and starving people to stampede into stores to stock up on goods like cooking oil, maize, sugar and bread, to such an extent that police were brought in...clerks frightened for their lives dashed out backdoors, merchants refused to restock depleting shelves to sell at half price, and closed down their shops. 450 businessmen were arrested in the last two days and thrown into jail. 90% of the butchers are no longer in operation; when i was there there were fuel shortages every week or so, but today the gas tanks are closed down, finished. Electricity has been limited to a mere 5 hours a day; there is little drinking water and in some places, none. In the last 7 years, 3 million people from Zimbabwe have fled the country for Britain, South Africa, nearby Zambia and Malawi, earning money elsewhere and sending it back home; these days, nights between 2 - 3000 people a night are risking their lives crossing the crockedile infested rivers into South Africa, and for the rest, the situation has become life-threatening. South Africa has yet to intervene - Magawbe has been seen and treated as a freedom fighter, a hero, having freed his people back in 1980 with Independence from the British.

I am getting emails everyday from friends there.
They don't write of hardship; they can't.
The government is monitoring international phone calls and emails; people who appear to be in opposition of this government are arrested, their computers confiscated, phones lines torn and destroyed.
They write as if nothing is happening.

Emily, who created 12 batiks for me to sell over here as a fundraiser. I included $80. US for shipping, but each time she has tried to pay for air shipping, the prices have skyrocketed. She trucks them home...and doesn't get back to me for weeks, ashamed, I am sure, because one, she has not been able to keep her promise in getting the pieces to me, and two, I am sure, she has spent the money on feeding her children and grandchildren.

I totally understand. I would do the same.

And Tawanda..who I sent $450. for him to buy 6 bikes for my project coordinator Mary Meza and her five high density, translate 'slum' home-care workers. About 2 months ago, he bused down to South Africa where bikes were cheaper and better i am told, and bought all six of them. Upon coming back into Zimbabwe, the border people allowed him to bring only 4 across, forcing him to leave behind 2 bikes at the border until he could come back later with a second visa. The four bikes were brought back to Harare by bus, and stored carefully in his father's house. A few weeks later, a family friend, desperate for money to feed his family, stole all four bikes and his father's camera collection and made off to Botswana with the proceeds. Tawanda has yet had the funds or ability to get back to the border for the two remaining bikes.

And again, I understand.
He was straight up about the bikes. He was ashamed in his confession, broken, disjointed, as if this was his fault. And even if it was, I have learned to understand.
I live in a beautiful home, on a river lined with tall healthy trees. I have enough food in my fridge to feed myself and my friends, family for weeks, with money in my pocket to spare. There are groceries in nearby Creemore, a huge selection of anything anyone could want. There is fresh well water pouring out from my taps; fuel in my car, and more only five miles away.
I surely understand.

Cathrine, who sewed me a little bag covered in African lions which she presented to me as a going away gift, had a new little baby girl only a month ago and called her Lynn. She has a husband who is out of work, and two other children, aged 3 and 4 - how are they coping?

And Paddington, once an actor and film maker, who i met back in November at a workshop as a home care worker holding down a volunteer job of coordinating 70,000 people in his high density community of Rugere. By day, he worked part time in nearby Harare installing satalite disks to support his wife, five children and aging parents, plus the wives and families of four brothers he had bured with Hiv Aids. When I spoke to him back in November, both of us taking the bus back into Harare after a full day workshop he confessed to me how scared he was, even back then, that he wouldn't be able to make ends meet.
He used the metaphor of them all behind him scratching on his back.
Can you imagine what he is going through now?

And little Leo, the remaining twin i was buying milk, soup, soap for, his sister Leona having passed away of Hiv Aids, just before her second birthday, and the family of his father who has taken he and his brother in, both mom and dad gone now from Aids....what of those people?

I have had a little success with Zimbabwe..sending $200. through Western Union to Mary Meza toward an orphanage project she has begun, and another $200 to my friends who teach people how to grow vegetable and herb gardens now sprinkled throughout the ghetto slums of Mufakose.

Tanzania is another story....
and i will leave that for another day..
Funny, since coming home, i have barely been able to sit down and write, it is just not happening, writers block, not in the mood, too busy, I don't know...or maybe it's just not time, the information mulling around somewhere in my head, ready to leap out at some precious given moment..I find myself consumed though, by Africa...I have been out there making presentations, eleven of them in the last couple of months....fundraising speeches, showing pictures, talking about my experiences, what i saw, how i felt, just from my point of view and certainly not the last word on anything...and that has gone incredibly well....Grade 2 up to grade 6 classrooms filled with enraptured children, grandmothers with the Steven Lewis Foundations in little towns sprinkled around Ontario, learning about and raising money for grandmothers in Africa, a senior citizens nursing home in Creemore, a group of interested people in Orangeville, Dunedin, the Creemore churches coming together for the first time with an Ecumenical service, focussing on Africa. Raising money, quite a bit of it, dollar by dollar. I drew ten pictures of African masks and printed them into postcard packages, each one selling for $20. I have raised over $300. with these cards. Along with ICA, the NGO who was kind enough to take me on last fall, we are about to send 3 Masai girls to secondary school for a year, plus buy 30 goats and sheds for members of the HIV AIDS positive group in Handeni, Tanzania....tomorrow i am doing an interview with CFRB's Tabby Johnson, who i used to work with a long time ago in another life....

I started to say, back at the beginning of this blog, that i seem to have writer';s block....unable to get at any of this at home on my own computer, in the quiet of my office..I just haven't been able to do it...it is hopeless! I am hopeless...one day with time on my hands, unable to get into this work, i washed my car down, not just the outside, but the inside too, a first, anything and everything to avoid writing....so today, I made a vow to myself that i was going to do it. I drove down to the city around noon, unloaded the car, my house spotless and waiting for a rental, with no excuse but to sit down and write. I couldn't. Couldn't. I got on my bike, road over to the Vieniese bakery at the end of the street, bought a brownie which i never do, and ate the whole thing wandering down the sidewalk, a new gallery on the corner of Ossington and Argyle, i take another twenty minutes to go through..where to go? what to do?
You get this horrible feeling of restlessness, a flakey feeling, of a summer's day wandering and wasting...of meandering into nothingness, and yet i have this book idea, book project. Book I have told each and every presentation i am busy writing...and i am not doing it. Jeeeessssseeee.
I just can't do it at home....so in desperation, I bike up to an internet cafe on Bloor street and like the proverbial duck to water, where did that come from? I settle in. And the writing began. It was easy, just like being in some little internet cafe in Africa, hiding out in a tiny cubicle, focussed, the pressure on, even the fear of the electricity going down, it all came back, so get down to it, and write! And it worked!

Have a great day, and light a candle for Zimbabwe....

Home Sweet Home....
4 and a half months later....a million miles away from Africa..a thousand years away from coming home -Alliston, Ontario...tonight, I'm giving a speech with the 'grandmother's" at the St. John's United church...last night Orangeville...am steaming along as though something grabbed me, engulfed me, my very being, as if i never had any choice...the longer i am away from Africa, the deeper my feelings are for those people, those beautiful countries i worked in....it is as if they have become my family, they have, i hear from them everyday..emails, phone calls, especially from Zimbabwe: "help me, Lynn you have to help me" that country is under seige...inflation is up to 4500%, when i was there it was about 1200. Back then, in October, fuel was in short supply, days when you couldn 't get gas, line ups everywhere, people waiting for hours, days...everything was done over the black market, everyone used it, electrical shortages, water shortages, people I knew walked, miles sometimes, in shoes threadbare, without enough money for bus fare, or lunch..
But now it is worse, so much worse....where once they were able to have two or three meals a day, they now have one..if they are lucky. Corn, the staple of Zimbabwe skyrocketed a few months ago - a family of five could have six days worth of food for 21 cents, but in one week it had gone up to $1.45..and now, who could even imagine... everything is up, schoools and hospitals closing down, nurses and doctors walking out because government paid salaries are so low they can't afford even bus fare to get to work, let alone a decent salary to put food on the table for their families; the economy has died, dead, and it's getting worse,Somewhere I read that inflation could soar up to 1 million percent. It is unimaginable.
My life today, four months after coming home. i am consumed by all of this.
Everything in my life changed. i closed down my art retreat when i got home..i had the choice of reving up the whole machine once again, for the 12th year....of getting a brochure out to over 2,000 people, running all over Ontario to art stores with leaflets, information, and endless hours on the telephone, registering, discussing, explaining...I just couldn't do it...i knew i would lose Africa, whatever that was, whatever that meant to me back then...four months ago...I sent out the big email..that this year the Creativity Art Retreat in Dunedin was closing, i sent back deposits for participants who had registered and wrote a bit of a notice in my website. Within a few days i had over 150 emails back, most of whom wrote, you go girl...some were upset, disappointed; life changes, people change, things we do change..there is a time for everything, ...a time to begin, a time to close down...i said to a friend oh how i would miss running the art retreat..he said "no you won't" just like that, and i knew i wouldn't, ...the energy i had to put out was huge, i simply had no desire to carry on...i needed to reserve my strength and creative juices for whatever was to be for me for what i needed to do about Africa, for all the things i experienced, what i saw, what i felt..i didn't want to lose that...

ICA were great..supportive, they listened to my stories, they set up an event where i was given the opportunity to show slides, do a bit of a review about my journey- but what next?

My kids were still living in my house: they had moved in back in September - John, Shauna, the two babies Pyper and Finn....they were renovating a big old house a few blocks from mine, it had been the perfect solution, but they were still here! The building permits had taken three months, the job was far bigger than first planned...they weren't about to move out, so i moved in, with my happy little culture shock tucked quietly under my arm and sort of reclaimed a bit of space at the back of the first floor, camping out on a futon couch ...my computer, my studio, my clothes mingling together a few feet from my bed. My place has two floors, two open spaces but for the bathrooms..great for one or two people..but not for a family and me coming home, glad to see everyone for the first few days, the presents dispersed, a hundred phone calls, a few parties, all of this in 26 degrees below February weather. The kids had settled into the living quarters upstairs with the babies...I took over the back of the downstairs, sort of. No privacy, I had more space in Africa - space to think, breath,write...meditate,whatever, and here we were all jambed in tumbling on top of each other, all of us with major sleep deprivation.

I took a baby every night for feedings...Pyper and Finn. They were gorgeous, fat, blond, blue eyed and 8 months old. They didn't remember me. They had a babysitter who came in by the day. For the first three weeks she sat with the babies on my futon bed downstairs, leaving the upstairs space for Johnny and Shauna. It had been a great arrangement while i was away but now i was back, squeezing into the adjacent bathroom which is the size of a broom closet to change my clothing, the jolly jumper hanging from the top of the door jam, preventing the door from being closed tight, the babies and Amy a scant few feet away...

Johnny and I had a bit of a meltdown one cold morning sometime around the third week. He arrived downstairs at 6 am, as he did every morning, a coffee for me in one hand, a baby tucked under his arm in the other; we all played together while Shauna slept upstairs. It was a beautiful time, most of the time, but that morning, for me, with no space of my own, no ability for reflection, no meditation, no writing time, no thinking time - up three times that night with Pyper, tired, exhausted, without my home.

John rose to the occasion, and produced in a minute a huge piece of muslim from his van and tacked it up across the loft space, now visually dividing me from the entranceway and baby changing tables and clothing... it was a good solution for awhile, at least now i had visual privacy....Amy and the babies were moved upstairs during the day; I got a sort of room of my own; and Shauna lost her private space upstairs.
I felt discombobulated.
I tried to keep up my exercise routine i had developed in Africa from walking so many miles everyday and pulled something huge in my right knee on the treadmill...I had just found out the night before that my freshly-declared ex of three years had been living with another woman the whole time i was in AFrica. My right knee swelled up double the size of the other and is still large to this day. Eventually i had an MRI and will have to get knee surgery sometime down the road. A nasty winter cold had set in..outside, there was no colour, no people singing, dancing in the streets, no outdoor cooking, no music, no laughter. It was Canada in the dead of winter. Cold. Mean, Hard. People running from one destination to another, bodies wrapped round and round in dark boring clothing, heads down to the wind. No communication. No looking each other in the eye, no hi, hello, how are you, no smiling, no greeting, no connection with each other, just the huge deep silence of winter. And me. I was sick with the flu, my knee throbbed, my heart ached, I had no place of my own, no space. I stopped writing this journal, stopped reading good books. I cried a lot. It occurred to me how ironic it was, that in Africa, during all those months, I was never sick, my body was in great shape, I could walk for miles and I barely thought of G from one week to the next.
It sucked. I hated being home.
What to do, what to do, what to do? I did babies, lunches with friends, read celebrity magazines. My brain dissolved...I couldn't keep my mind on anything. It was like a dose of candy floss in the circus, too much popcorn in the movies. Light. Inocuous. And boring.

I decided to try to live like i lived over there.

In Africa you can get up in the morning and plan your day, but for sure, within a very short time, plans would change, tires would blow, hours would be spent waiting for something, someone, you had to just let it happen, not get upset, be flexible, actually enjoy the changes and let the whole thing flow, and it did. Things always worked out. Always. if i was three hours late for my workshop i was facilitating, i was simply three hours late. People were still there patiently waiting. I had to readjust the agenda and get going, and going we got to, and did and it worked out perfectly. People showed up late, often, maybe even a day or two later, but show up they did....something always happened in the waiting..someone came along, another conversation, another experience. It was that way all the way through the travels.
Why couldn't it be that way back at home in Canada.
Let whatever is supposed to happen, happen. Period.
A simple thing to say,think, but in our culture we are used to organzing and trying to control our lives, to such an extent that we, I get impatient, when plans are not met, at that time, or place. Well i was going to change that and let whatever was supposed to happen to me, happen.
And it did.

Within a very short time, maybe a few weeks only, I decided to write a book based on this blog of mine..I had had some pretty good feedback from a lot of people, some of whom I was shocked had been reading it from the beginning. I could rewrite the blog, add some drawings, photographs....something along the lines of Eat Pray Love...a personal odyssey, the evolving and understanding of someone, me, who knew so little as i headed out to AFrica...a little afraid of Zimbabwe..having been told that black men with HIV AIDS raped white women as a cure....and how i grew to make my way around these countries, a personal story, voyage..something i was sure people would be interested in reading...

I also wanted to do public speaking presentations of what i saw and felt over there...to raise consciousness of what is going on and to raise money, lots of money... I had honed down my fundraising projects to buying bikes for homecare workers in Zimbabwe, goats and sheds for HIV AIDS positive people in Handeni, secondary school education for Masai girls in Tanzania, and money to send positive people to a Masai healer i had met in a village in Sindeni, where i was told there was a cure for Aids.

And lastly, i wanted to make an exhibition of paintings based on photographic images i had taken in Kibera, one of the worlds biggest slums, deep in the heart of Nairobi.
The course was set..now all i had to do was to do it.

My friend Maxine came over and helped me make sense of the over 1,000 photographs lodged in the IPHoto section of my computer. We separated them into categories: orphanage, art workshops, HIV AIDS workshops, Masai, street scenes, children, projects, Kibera and one entitled "my favourite Africa", the best pictures of the lot, and there were lots of them. It was impossible not to take fabulous photographs there.

-Sierra's grade 2 classroom
-ICA speech.
-Mexico, allergic to 5 million bugs = welts, itching,misery.
-Chicago: peace, quiet, crying in the African section of the museum,sitting on the floor drawing masks. and drawing African masks.
-Home: Cat house.
-Roly Flemming: angel of organizing Creemore speeches.

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!

KIBERA, Nairobi - one of the world's most awful slum areas, 1000 hectacres, some 70,000 people - and by far the worst poverty i have ever seen. You can't come to Nairobi and do any kind of work with HIV AIDS and not visit Kibera.

Monday morning, my last day with the flight taking off at 11:35 am, I woke early determined to go- Shitema, the former UN ambassador described it with such compassion his face changing, crumbling, watering his eyes. The woman on duty all night at the hotel called someone to take me through, bags packed, a bit of coffee, toast and by 7 we were on our way, strangely only a few kilometres from the place i was staying. As we get closer, at this hour, hundreds, maybe thousands of people surging out of the area and moving quickly up the hill on their way to work. We made our way slowly down the main road, at the bottom making a left turn into a world changed. The streets were mud, pockets of water collected from rain the night before, floating with garbage, a chicken picking its way through, on each side what could only be described as sheds, shacks, made from cardboard, corregated iron sheeting, crumbling plaster, wood crammed in, side by side each one attached to the next. Fences of barbed wire, sticks, wood, corregated iron, doors opening into dark and dirty hallways, rooms, with someone peering out from a sewing machine, people sitting at the side of the road, cooking chapittas, pancakes and madas, little cakes in big metal woks over fires fuelled by kerosene, charcoal or wood; open fires burning garbage in the middle of the road as we pick our way through rushing people, children in school uniforms carrying little back packs travelling in pairs, clumps standing and sitting and watching our car as it moves slowly along.

I was taking notes of what I was seeing, while Peter my driver was explaining: no electricity, no water with huge round corregated iron tanks every here and there collecting rain water and sold: 20 litres for 2 shillings about $1.40. No toilets, no privacy. Dank and grim. Churches, clinics and chemists offering free medicine and advice, youth and help agencies, woman's groups and beauty salons wedged side by side in amongst filthy crevices and holes lined with old rags and sheets of cardboard as places for people to sleep. Men bunched in a row, so many of them 10-20 maybe more, blocking the roadway in front of a sign saying Kakaunga Hotel waiting for the bar to open at 8am. for home-made beer and wine,made with corn. Bright red Coke slogans blasting 'a better way', Ïn the Wings of Love health care, Ghetto Guts - an electronic repair shop and Let's Meet Bread Depot buried amongst storefronts and shops with pink plastic shoes and yellow buckets of cooking oil, withered shanks of last week's lettuce hooked and hanging off metal pipes, cigarettes, pots, pans, bags of maize, flour, a few tomatoes, potatoes, onions and a shock of red bouganvillia strung up and snaking across barbed wire.

Early morning people, carrying things on their heads, shoulders, with babies on their backs, a team of life streaming by and peering in surprised and curious, asking Peter what are we doing?Friendly,carrying cups of chai- steaming hot, calling "Jambo! Habare!" Good morning! the children getting up close with huge smiles with a big "how are you!!" pronounced clearly and distinctly in primary school English like kids we pass everywhere.

Dogs lying on our path, sleeping as if dead and digging through garbage, the bleetingof a goat and chickens as we pick our way over sharp and jagged shards of rock down to the very bottom, deep into the bowels of Kibera to Saba, a city within a city, a valley of hell where rents are the lowest. Rags, filth, dark and smelly, patches of cardboard, wood, metal nailed, roped together onto anything to cover the dirge, the stench of big piles of rotting garbage, dank, old, tired, spent people sitting and lying down, a woman, old, ancient and weathered, resting on top of an overturned pail roasting cobs of corn, a dog at her feet. Two little ones standing in a doorway, a boy with another, slung on his back - two playing in mud, naked. For a long time, Peter and I drive slowly along,in silence.

I ask him how does he reconcile living well, how can any of us, how can any of us, who have so much, live with this in our world. I could hardly speak, repeating myself, trying to find the word, the words that weren't coming out well.

He said: "I only pray, that God, will help them". Slowly.

ICA - The Institute of Cultural Affairs, an NGO operating successfully in over 30 countries around the world, dealing with issues of poverty, sustainable development, disease, hunger, micro finance lending and so much more-working in nine countries in Africa focusing on the HIV AIDS issue - the ICA originated in the United States in the 60s, offering workshops and trainings to people and assistance t0 communities with the goal of paving the way to help people make their world a better place.

I'm excited about an ICA agriculatural project: in Isingya, Kenya.
Just one example of how the ICA operates:

Over lunch Friday, with 5 Kenya ICA members in the dusty town of Isingya, half way between the Tanzanian border and Nairobi in the back room of an old hotel on the side of the highway, white metal picnic table, eating bowls of pieces of goat meat, tough, a bit grizzly drenched in a sort of thin soupy gravy, with chunks of potato, slivers of carrot, onion - all of this eaten with ugali: a whipped up and boiled corn flour mix cut up into slices which looked like white bread, broken off in chunks and rolled up in a ball with the right hand and scooped into the meal...we talked about the 3 year agricultural project I had just visited which involved assisting 12 Masai villages in developing a sustainable farming project to grow grains and vegetables enough to feed their community in the years to come.

We'd just come back from 2 of the 12 villages they had been working in over the last 8 months, where ICA, funded by donations from Japan, had successfully completed the building of 6 example farms with about 30 enthusiastic Masai members in each community.

It was a miracle to see! Imagine. Out there in the middle of nowhere on flat parched terrain of scruffy brown grasses and no trees - land which had suffered drought conditions with little rain over the last three years, they had created and grown huge garden plots using a wide variety of of beans, grains: sorgum and cowpeas; corn plants and sunflowers for oil. All growing, strong, green, a patch of hope in this drought filled field....and each one with a huge rectangular hole dug, the size of a deep 20 yard swimming pool, lined in sheets of heavy commercial plastic waiting for the big rains to come, late March, April, to collect a good supply of water to get them through another drought. The grains and corns and vegetables were chosen to be drought resistant, experiments were taken on what variety grew best and where and how long it took to grow. Members of the community had planted a garden on the right side showing how they thought they should plant, and on the left side, ICA experts demonstrated another way of planting, resulting for people to see for themselves, the difference in ways to plant, as well as what to plant.

I asked Masai chairman Kapshi Sonko who stood with great pride in front of the 8 foot high corn he had directed his people to grow, what did he think about what his community had accomplished: he told me he had never farmed before, ever, but so worried was he about the demise in livestock production and food in his community, he said, "he was willing to try anything, to see what these young ICA fellas were talking about."

The project was a huge success. ICA and the six villages they had already worked in celebrated their 8 month victory with a huge Farmer's Field Day, with over 300 people in attendance. Government, corporate, business, agro chemical industrial representative, veternarians and farmers from the community stood in the open field marvelling at the phenomenal produce in full evidence, soon to harvested in a week or so. The Government Argricultural Officers looked a little sheepish, this is what they were supposed to be doing, but how exactly did ICA do this? The Masai people, they said, "were notoriously 'lazy'. How in earth did you get them to work so hard?!!"

So, over lunch I asked them, how did they do this? I wanted to know..What were the steps from beginning to end did they take to make this project such a huge success, and in only a period of 8 months..?

By understanding this, I would better understand the basic philosophy of ICA worldwide, and it turned out, one of which I believe and adhere to completely. So here is my synopsis of what they told me, Mark and John and the others around the table that day at lunch, with such enthusiasm, passion and skill, I hope I can convey this in my layman's terms, to describe their process to you.
Also, so much of my story is about the Masai people because in Tanzania and Kenya where i spent so much of my time working, a good part of the ICA focus has been in the Masai villages, with people living traditionally in spartan and difficult circumstances with much poverty, very little education and few advantages, a community much like so many others stricken with HIV AIDS.

Lots of other NGOs had gone into these villages through the years with handouts and donations, food, machinery, money, all graciously given, but dissipated soon in a short period of time, with little to show for it in the long run. What was it that ICA managed to do to create a sustainable project which will last and will supply ample food and even maybe more important, an enormous sense of pride and self esteem for a job well done.

First of all, need. The Masai, traditionally a nomadic pastoral people, involved predominantly in the care and accumulation of livestock, moving their settlements from one grassy waterhole to the next, enjoying a diet of meat, blood and milk, period. They did not stay long enough in one place to grow maize, grains, they were not an agricultural society. But in recent years, with severe drought causing the death of livestock, hence less money for trading and eating, and now with the onslaught in December 06 of the dreaded Rift Valley Fever, they were open to looking at new means of survival.

Enter ICA, having done a PROJECT ANALYSIS which they discovered a possible need for an agricultural project in this area, and after managing to secure funding from Japanese donators, they conducted a BASIC SURVEY, where they went into the community and had meetings with and consulting Chiefs and community leaders of possible economic, social, and cultural needs of the community. From here they formulated questions which were then presented to the community as a whole in a series of 'strategic planning' meetings.

STRATEGIC PLANNING: with skilled specifically-trained ICA facilitators, here is where the backbone of the ICA philosophy is underlined: basically, to assist people to help themselves, in order for them to take ownership of the projects and to determine theselves the solutions to their 'problems', therefore to be responsible for the outcome of the project. Never to impose their ideas on the people.

How is this done?

This particular team of ICA workers, under the guidance of Project Coordinator Mark Lusweti, and Agriculture expert Githaiga Kirubi from the Kikuyu Tribe began the meetings with a
VISION: asking people to imagine how they would like their community to be, what changes wuold they make? what do they need? in the best world, imagine...let your mind go, and imagine...Well, they came up with a long list of needs, desires, dreams, and at this stage, as with other NGOs who had come into their villages, they expected ICA to hand out and provide them with the means to make their dreams come true: provide food, create schools, roads, etc.
But no...
The facilitator then asks: "what is holding you back from achieving your dreams? What blocks? What is the problem that you can't have what you have said you want so badly?
What are the problems? Money?"
ICA believes where there is a problem there is a solution.
"Money is in itself, not a problem; there is plenty of money in the world, in banks, other people have it. The WAYS of getting money is the problem. "

"So. What can we/YOU do to overcome these problems to get the things you most want?"
At this point it becomes clear that ICA is not here to solve the problems. It is up to participants to come up with ideas and solutions to the problems they have spoken about.
This is the beginning of them taking OWNERSHIP of the problem, and hence the solution.

SYSTEMATIC ACTION: Here participants offer solutions to their problems as the facilitator continues to ask: "How are YOU going to do this?" stressing that these problems need to have solutions created by participants, not ICA people. Hence, once they have decided what they want, the problems and how they can solve them, they realize that they are going to have to make CHANGES in order to make their dreams come true....

Facilitators check with them the feasibility of their solutions, keeping in mind the following points on the SMART chart:
S-specific solutions; M - measurable actions; A - Attainable goals; R - realistic and T - timebound.
They then created a TIMELINE: in increments of 3 years, 1 year, 90 days, etc.

As we wrapped up, we talked about these methods, this process....how it could be used successfully with anyone who wants to make changes in their lives, how each step could be utilized: to visualize a better life, a better future....then to look at the problems and to look for solutions, even when it means making changes, sometimes big changes....taking ownership of our own situations, stop blaming other people, or other circumstances, we can change things and we can make a difference...and yes, it takes RISKING...Julia Cameron calles it Taking the Leap and having the faith, that the net will indeed, be there....Risking. Moving ahead, even when things seem impossible, bleak, too hard...this is what i have seen here so often in Africa...people, with so little and yet with so much...taking that big step, making changes, resiliant...and doing it.

Oh i am so tired of writing right now, but i am so excited and thrilled with what i have seen here, with the incredibly charismatic, hard working and compassionate people i have met here, with the mothers carrying loads on their heads and babies on their backs, and small children covered in poverty, hundreds of people i have been so lucky to meet and to know a little, the community coordinator who cancelled a meeting one morning because her grandaughter had died the night before, the two babies in Zimbabwe suffering with lack of milk, unable to stand up, move...the group of musicians, stone cutters, painters, poets trying to set up an artist coop in that country with 1000% inflation, no economy, no medical supplies, no doctors, the question of how to make a living with their art with no tourists, no one buying; people reaching out to each other, in their own misery extending themselves, on the lookout to helping others, giving what little they have, sharing with their neighbours, being there for each other...i have seen this, always a bright good hello, and understanding, always trying, even breaking out in song together, a giving, a joy, love....

Oh i could go on, and on.....and on....on this my last day in Africa....do stop me!
Tomorrow, Amsterdam and Merit and Hans and the new Van Gogh exhibition if I can persuade Merit to go...and then Toronto....and yes, i am a little apprehensive of coming back into our western ways, the integration process.... I know for me whatever it is, it will take a long time, reflection, months...to let this be what it will be....so now, more importantly, I want to know about you!

Nairobi. Feb. 12/07.
Heading out in less than 24hours tomorrow for Amsterdam, impossible to believe. Just this morning up in Nanyuki, a bustling town snuggled under the shadow of Mount Kenya, cooler there than anywhere I have been - blankets at night without the usual mosquito netting of which i am not fond, psyched for minus ten in Toronto. Have thought a lot about being here, about this incredible opportunity I was entrusted with ICA Canada. Yesterday at this time, lunch of beans and chipattas cooked in a pitch dark Masai dung and grass hut with no ventillation, smoke billowing up and out in white puffs through slits in its corregated and straw roof, the eyes burn, not great for the resperatory system....back in Mto Wa Mbu, Tanzania, ICA installed 150 chimneys with big modern wood stoves into huts in villages there - each one needing only 2 logs - a bonus for Masai living in huge open spaces with few trees. Women carrying huge bundles of sticks, wood pieces wrapped and attached to their forheads with a leather strap, walking for miles on end everyday to provide fire for their family's dinner.

I am off on a tangent, so much to say, and i want to remember everything; today being the last day to get it all down...it is raining hard with thunder outside this magically fast and modern internet cafe, cooling the air, breezy as i write...

Four not so comfortable hours across potholed dusty roads, bright orange in colour, climbing and picking our way up riverbeds of rocks, jagged stones and boulders in an old green Suzuki with Saaya, a 20s something Masai project coordinator, his father and four others . I am in the front seat - while they're squeezed along two benches in the back. We detour off across the scruffy grass tundra as far as they eye can see for an hour or so, drop Saaya and the four off for an HIV AIDS coordinating meeting in Chumvi, a settlement of huts and wooden structures with doors and panels of wood covering windows painted everywhere turquoise or cobalt blue. We turn and head back to the main road with another three hours of joggling raggedly like being hurled around on a bucking bronco, with Saaya's father in the back seat to Ilingwesi - his mother's boma -a compound of mud and corregated iron huts encircled by a fence of upright wooden sticks held together by wire.

His dad is dressed Western, in a sports jacket and slacks, black boots and a canvass hat; he is 54 years old, handsome in a rugged way with a ready smile, and has three wives, two of whom he married with only 8 months apart when he was a young Masai moran warrior some thirty years ago. Consequently Saaya and his 17 brothers and sisters have virtually two mothers, both living and raising their families together in this boma, each with their respective dung houses and kitchens side by side. The third wife, which he married later lives in her own boma a few hours away. The father shares his time between all three wives harmoniously, without a shred of jealousy, a custom which has continued in the Masi culture for hundreds of year. The reason I an told, is practical; the more cows and goats the Masai have, the more wives they need to take care of their domas. Wives are responsible for building the dung and stick huts themselves, milking the goats and cows early morning and at sunset and looking after their children. Masai women are exotic and magestic, their heads fully shaved, tall thin bodies wrapped in royal blue sheets, adorned with rows of white beaded earings and necklaces swinging with metal discs from huge pierced holes in their earlobes, the size of silver dollars. When not busy with family and home, they spend their days collecting wood and selling tobacco snuff and beaded jewellery sitting in clumps at the side of the road.

The more children they have the better - whose job from about age 4 on is to be responsible for large herds of goats and cows with only a stick out in the hills to urge them along. It isn't uncommon to see Masia kids in the middle of day, hot and without water, standing at the side of the road with a cluster of livestock behind them as we roll by passing bottles of water and food out of the car.

Once a boy is around 13, he is initiated into manhood with hundreds of other boys in his age group in a huge and resplendent circumcision ceremony where he undergoes the operation without any anesthetics (sp) in the company of family and elders. He is required to sit motionless, without sound during the entire procedure, under threat of bringing shame to his family. Once circumcized he and the other boys in his agement become Warriors, carrying a spear and stick, their long hair and face painted artistically with red ochre and adorned in beaded and bone jewellery - their only responsiblity in life to protect their communities from warring tribes and wild animals. Every ten years or so, when a new lot of boys are of age for circumcision, the previous warriors shave their heads and move into the first stages of Elder, Orpayans...

Happily off on another tangent....we race across Kenya countryside, miles of scruffy brown grass, dotted here and there with Acacia trees , herds of zebra chewing grass at the side of the road, dashing away at the sound of the truck, we pass through a village where we are stopped by a group of women and load up the back of the Suzuki with a truckful of corn bundled up in huge white bags for roasting next to Saayas father and continue on to Ilingwesi...where was I?

I've been interviewing Masai men and women along the way with the help of the driver to translate from Swahili or Masai - who have just participated a three month project with four ICA Canadian HIV AIDS workers, exhilerated with what they had learned and empowered now to take this information into their communities - how, without my connection with ICA Canada could i have possibly experienced Africa in this way: the land, the villages, the people, the issues. Phenomenal to me how lucky i am and forever thankful to the Canadian ICA people who have directed and supported me with each step along the way.....John Patterson, David Buwalda, Liz Donelly, and especially to Sister Virginia Varley, Chair of ICA Canada and fellow artist who introduced me to this world-wide NGO in August, "by chance', and how so long ago that now seems...
I sign off here for a few minutes break....



On Miles of scruffy grass, a few Acacia trees, pockets of cows, goats and a few zebra who dart and run as we clatter along and pick up his mother, the second of three wives and his brother and back we drove again, along the way interviewing participants of the recent ICA project where 4 Canadians successfully went into this

Second post today....the first almost disappeared as always into the hot sunny biosphere shining steadily across Africa, the big rains haven't begun yet, but the little ones poured hard this year for the first time in memory - maize, sunflowers, potatoes, avocado, mango, oranges, tomatoes, bananas abundant in baskets, plastic pails, falling out of open trucks, freshly picked tea leaves packed tightly in big plasticky cloth-like bags - lined up along the roadside waiting transportation to Dar es Salaam and then on out to the world.

Where was I? with the orphans...Lindsey and I took a bus into Arusha last week to investigate foreign adoption, albeit with mixed emotions ...the concept of raising kids so far away in culture, language, climate, peoples, tribes, rituals. Is it fair? Yet everyone here said YES, a resounding positive yes, do it....give these kids a chance. But unlike Madonna with her Malowi adoption, in Tanzania you have to be a resident for two or three years. So that is and was, that.
Saying goodbye, to people in every village, every town.

Charles and Barie last week, four days of climbing the Korogue mountain range just south and east of Moshe,4000 feet up to 13 villages of mud and clay houses, red and dusty, with meetings with farmers to organize constitutions encouraging them to work together to form collectives with fixed prices, to protect them from being ripped off by big city conglamorates...and while i wait, I get out of the truck with my sketch book, sit on a patch of grass and begin to draw what i am seeing in front of me, a sort of grocery with piles of tomatoes atop each other pyramid style, a stick and mud hut with freshly washed laundry draped and drying on top of a bush. Peeking around each corner, the children in each village at first afraid, hanging back into clusters watching this new thing, some hiding behind their mother's skirts, and then creeping closer, closer, silently, to see what this white mzunga is up to. I pretend to ignore them as I draw in a giraffe, an elephant, a cat, along with a couple of kids in front of the drawing; the silence at first small and then erupting like a noisy volcano into exclamations, laughter, shouts, drawing every kid in the village, sometimes well over a hundred, pushing shoving to get closer until the circle closes and i can no longer see.

An elder with a little round embroidered hat snug on his head appears with a big stick and a need for power shoes them away in anger. He has been drinking. Home brew made from sugar cane. He is a jerk who i assure it is okay, i like this and stand up and contine to draw as they swarm once again around again. We play Swahili and English games, naming animals, noses, mouths, hair, do a bit of singing, i am telling them all about Canada, and what the kids do there in the snow while Charles translates; we have to go, we all shout Qua Hari...goodbye, goodluck! and joggle our way into the next village.

This is life in Africa, every day, everywhere we go.
Lindsey attracted a following of kids like the Pied Pyper, imitating her antics, laughing with her, vying to hold her hand everywhere she went. It's jut happens naturally, you just have to be open.

Saying goodbye to the Masai chief we became such good friends with, who waited patiently for two days in Mto Wa Mbu while i was out in the field, I offered to pay his hotel and food. Masai have thousands of acres and more thousands of goats and cattle, but little of what we call material comfort. Rather than selling a cow or two, they live sparcely with little, walking all night without money for transportation be they a chief, head of their tribe, or not.

Over our last lunch with the usual beans and rice with a tomatoey sauce and greens at a place called Mi Casa in the middle of a little banana plantation he proposed I buy a goat for $40 can. instead of paying for food and hotel. He would have my initials branded behind its ear. LC., a huge honour in the world of Masai. Then, over a few beers and much laughter we imagined its babies each having my three kid's initials branded behind their ears, then the grandchildren, and on and on, so someday when we returned to his expansive boma with stick and cow dung huts and prickly thorn fences perched high atop the Rift valley mountain range over looking the world, we would have our very own tribe of goats to visit. The idea kills me!

A last fairwell goodbye to ICA project coordinator and superb Toyota-driver-through-hill-and-dale Charles who works with boundless energy and enthusiasm and his co-worker Barie lugging my bags up and into the bottom of the big old bus - thank you for making my and Lindsey's time superb and memorable in Mto Wa Mbu..and on to Arusha for breakfast with Tanzanian ICA director Doris, what can i say about her, except that i have known her forever and will forever know her. She is the best.

Everyone in Africa has a cellphone but me - interupting every conversation, checking and rechecking, text messaging, fingers flying, heads lowered fixating on phones on laps, on tables. Even Masai warriors high on the plains with cows and goats carry a cell hidden underneath their red and purple sheets tied at the shoulder; Everyone has a phone. I should have bought one in Zimbabwe, but didn't and didn't in Tanzania. Should have. So for me keeping in touch is a nightmare, finding a phone and getting it to work, each county with different codes, numbers, phone cards, prices. The hardest part moving from country to country is logistics: money, exchange, buses, terminals, where to stay, what roads to take,how and when to get from here to there. And now, Nairobi. Nairobi is harder than most, a big polluted throbbing pusating city of about 8 million people, harbouring the world's biggest slum at the edge of town.

Big, mean and scary, after all these pastoral villages, I haven't looked forward to it.
But as usual, with most situations i brace myself for, I am proved wrong.

A great greeting with Canadian ICA Miriam Patterson and her co worker Saaya fresh off a very succesful four month HIV AIDS education and testing project with a series of Masai villages in a community called Ilingwesi, 3 hours out of Nairobi - very exciting and the first of its kind in Africa. I will go there this weekend with Saaya to interview peer educators and participants and meet his mother.

And this morning by chance, if there is any such thing, breakfast with the former Kenyan ambassador to the UN responsible for disarmament, anti apartheid and nuclear issues. Aged 75, astonishing and rare his stories, my emotions a little raw these days, bringing me to tears. Held up and arrested in the mid 70s, followed by a police car with lights blinking on his way home to his house in Scarsdale, New York, he made it into his property through the large security door the police in close tow. They jumped out, pinned him against his car his arms raised high, demanding to know what a black man was doing in this neighbourhood, on this property. Mean. Angry,they raided his body, stripping it of identification. With disbelief they discovered his cards stamped with UN protocol and signed by Cyrus Vance himself. As they let him go and got back into their car without a word of apology, he hit the down button on the gate which slammed shut, locking them into the compound. Out they got in a second surge of anger, demanding to be let go, but until they offered a proper apology he stood his own, refusing to raise the gate. Finally, they did apologize and hopefully damned shamed, they learned something that day, as they drove away.
I ran into him, again by change a few hours later, and invited him to breakfast tomorrow..
And so it goes.
It's 6:30...
I have been at this all afternoon...the first internet cafe with machines that don't stick and collapse, with electricity, ambiance and a fine restaurant downstairs called Java, serving sandwiches, hamburgers and salads - my first sampling in almost 4 months...I have lost weight, maybe15 pounds. My hair is coal black, the only colour you can get in rural Africa - I like it, the changes on the outside....but as with the orphans it is said that tears fall silently, and only on the inside. Leaving Africa, saying goodbye, leaving so much of a part of me here and taking so much of Africa home, it will take some time of looking back, to understand whatever this has meant to me.
Lindsey wrote to describe the babies: "HUGE now, their heads encased in big smiles, almost talking, almost crawling.....Sierra, I can hardly wait to tell her about the elephant running after our van of orphans, the giraffes gobbling thorn trees high above the trees and show her all my pictures of the orphans....and hello soon, to my kids, and to you....
I sign off with emotions raw and kind of huge.....xxme.

Greetings from Nairobi!
...the Masai have a proverb: "never move ahead until looking carefully behind first". I thought this was to protect yourself, especially in Nairobi, its reputation as the world's most thieving, raping, mugging, criminal city with eyes in the back of your head, with bits of Kenyan shillings hidden in your pocket, your backpack, your purse, moving carefully ahead..but no, this proverb is about reflecting on the journey of where you have been, before going on. With 5 days to go I find myself in a place of both behind and ahead, so much of where i have been, the people i have had to say goodbye to, the ten small children of the orphanage in Mto Wa Mbu..the last day with big black eyes, lined up in 2 rows along front of the building, each one decked out in freshly-donated uniforms of yellow and blue, watching with wonder as Charles, Barie and I unloaded a table, bench, bedsheets of yellow, pink, green and blue, towels and a bag of used clothing from the back of the truck....and finally six dolls for the girls and four shiny new trucks for the boys. Speechless they were, laughing, dragging combs through the doll's hair, running the trucks across the cement floor, hugging, protecting, hording their toys, maybe the only ones they have ever had. We went back for my last good byes four hours later to find three of the four trucks in pieces, and several dolls with hair askew and eyes missing, hugs, lots more pictures and a final Do a Deer sung many times over as i dragged myself out of there. so terribly sad.