family traditions

I'm getting ready to go home, to be home for a while.  And, while I pack and prepare to get on another couple of planes and lose a couple days of my life to airport limbo, I've been thinking about my heritage.

As an American, I identify with precious little else.  I've got some English/Scottish and a bunch of Eastern European block countries in my background somewhere, but I could not tell you where my ancestors came from.  I think I've got some German?  But I only think that because of how thoroughly I was taught to scrub things clean.  And I may have made up the Scottish heritage entirely, as I can't really abide the bagpipes.  So, I'm a American.  An American mutt, from the East Coast, right outside the Capitol, if anyone's asking, but mostly, staunchly American.

I've grown up very proud of that, and I've grown even more attached to it as an expat.  Americans are wanderers... or at least my Americans have been.  My family, whoever they are, wherever they come from, they have always been wanderers.

My great-grandmother, a Heil, lived in Baltimore long before I got there.  She held railroad stock, fiercely independent woman that she was.  And my grandmother Helen used to be walking through the streets of Irvington, a place none of us are likely to ever get back to, and would catch of glimpse of her mom on the train, going anywhere, reading the newspaper.

My grandfather was active-duty military for most of his life and each of his children were born in different states (and one in a different country)!  Not even the world was a big enough adventure for him.  He needed to see heaven too.

My aunt Carmen, who died just a few years ago, was a feisty old woman, whose walking club offered a farewell hike after her wake.  She told me a story once about being in a South American country during a political coup.  The tour guides packed all the visitors into a church until the fighting was over and then began making arrangements to send everyone home.  Carmen marched up to the folks in charge and asked "when will we go back out there and see it?"  The guides told her that she'd be on a plane shortly.  She asked why?  All the good stuff was still waiting for her, probably made better for the excitement.

My parents took a roadtrip around the country for their honeymoon.  My brother and I have our fond roadtrip memories, as children.  We've seen the United States from the ground.

I hold this heritage inside of me, so deeply that decisions made in this vein - running away to the beach, new-city adventures, strolling by myself through a park, solo roadtrips much longer than normal people would commit to - these aren't questioned, they are assumed.  Of course.  The people who have come before me have led me to these experiences, they followed this path first, to the wanderlust of my life.

quite the pair (pear, no really, pair)

These are fruit trees in my backyard. Growing of their own accord. Much the same way my food is getting cooking and my house is getting cleaned and my laundry is getting done. All without any help from me.

I believe one is a banana tree and the other coconut, but I could be corrected. I bet they are enjoying the rain.

Apparently my feet are unusually tiny here in Africa and steel toed boots must be ordered for me before I can venture into anything mining-related.  So, my observations of the site have been limited to getting lost and finding offices, how I'm still startled by the giant marabou storks all over the place, how beautiful and colorful it is here.

My swahili improves little by little. Habari is hello, Na mtufuta means I'm looking for someone, Rafiki is how you say friend. Also, I think the weasel looking sidekick in the Lion King (Timon, you remember) was a mongoose. Though, again, I stand to be corrected on this.

Almost everything travels in numbers here - lots and lots of swallows, and little birds with turquoise bodies and brown wings to hide within, and packs of mongoose, and flocks of guinea fowl, and troops of foxes, and tribes of monkeys. More than one of anything, of everything. It boggles the mind.

But out back, just one banana tree and one coconut tree. They've been there a while, you can tell. I imagine they are friends, grown out of their differences, and now content just to watch the house, soak up the rain, bask in the sun, a pair in their own way.

the trifecta

WOO!

Today I got the trifecta - hot water, power, and internet.  This is apparently unusual in Africa, but I have to say, I might have been able to have it sooner if I'd used the shower properly.  I've had cold showers for five days... and all of you who know me REALLY well know that I don't only NOT take cold showers, I scald myself daily.  And also that I love showers, and morning singing, and deep thinking, and the water, and being clean.  I love these things and I was having to pep talk myself into the bathroom every morning.  However, having conquered what I believe to be my own orientations towards Africa-must-be-missing-something, I have hot showers, starting this morning.  Over the last few days, we've lost power once and the internet has been slower than it was when I arrived (though it's never disappeared completely).  But this morning, I awoke to the trifecta!  And it is VERY EXCITING.

Mostly because I have found what is missing in Africa, and it isn't hot water or power or internet or good food or great people or interesting work or beauty or opportunity or any of those preconceptions that I might have added to my carry on for the trip.  What's missing from Africa is home.  My network isn't here, they are ... hold please ... 43,020 km if I take I-90 through Mongolia and then a ferry of some kind and goodness ... oh okay ... happyzebra.com tells me ... 7,836.7 miles as the crow flies ... that'll do.  So, on with it, my people are forever away.  My PEOPLE that I care for deeply, whose lives are so rich and interesting, whose challenges I find myself engaged in too, whose perceptions inform my thinking.  Those things aren't here.

And I do miss them, but they sent me off well.  With all kinds of hopes and dreams and journals to record them.  With words of support and encouragement.  With the momentum of many years of being loved in the cocoon, they sent me off to see the world.  I will do that for you all, I will happily keep my promise.

Maisha Mzuri.  A Swahili toast to a beautiful life.  (And don't quote me on the spelling, thank you very much.)