Desired location – San Antonio Hot SpringsMonth – JanuaryDistance from Highway 126 – 5.2 MilesIssues – Forest Road 376 Closed for WinterSolution – Bicycle

It’s January in New Mexico and I have a wild hair; which happens frequently. Anyways, I decide that now is as a good a time as any to visit the reportedly beautiful San Antonio Hot Springs. So I talk to some people, do the internet research and realize that Forest Road 376 is definitely closed in the winter. Now I am not intimidated by a 10.4 mile (round-trip) hike, in a day absolutely no problem. I have done 25 miles in day, 16 in the rain – hiking doesn’t bother me. Boredom does! So I think to myself why don’t I bike it. Now I am from Arizona, where I have spent most of my winters and snow...it’s not really an issue for us. Here New Mexico we have had a number of winter storms, but the last one was weeks ago, before Christmas, and in Albuquerque there isn't anything resembling snow. So biking seems easily feasible. I pack extra clothes, lunch, sneakers, hiking boots and gaiters, and head for the mountains.

Oh shit! I forgot to tell someone where I was going. Now here is where I am going to convince you that biking, hiking and swimming, my primary activities, are absolutely do-able as a single female. The contradiction - guys go into the woods by themselves on a relatively regular basis and nobody questions them. But if a competent “young lady" wants to go out and get her kicks by herself she will encounter opposition and questioning all along the way. Now I am not exactly a typical female. And I will admit that before seeing 127 Hours I may have ventured far into dangerous places without telling a soul, but I learned from Ralston’s mistake (BTW I have immense respect for Mr. Ralston. If I had been in his shoes the headlines would have been a lot more ordinary - "The search for Ms. Fabry-Wood ended today when they found her body. Her arm having been pinned to a wall in Southeastern Utah"). Today I sent out 2 text messages; each of which resulted in panic and a variation of these three questions:

Who are you going with? Why are you going alone? What if something happens?

I am not going to comment on my answers they will come with time. What I will comment on is the fact that as a woman traveling alone in Africa I encountered these same questions. And yes, in my travels I landed myself in situations which I would not wish upon anyone, but I got myself out by using resources which were available to me, by keeping my head, and by never giving up. I apply these same principles to situations I encounter ‘out there’ as well. The truth is I have never been truly scared in the wilderness; I am currently knocking vigorously on wood. Not to say that I have never been truly scared, just to say that those many moments when I have been paralyzed by fear always, always happen in civilized settings. So when I enter the woods, the wilderness, when I go outside – I do so calmly, with great excitement, expecting nothing but wonder. And these things I have always found there. Plus what's out there that would pose more danger to a woman than to a man? Bears? Hypothermia? Being lost? Rocks pinning you to a wall? All of these things are unbiased, if you let them they will take you, woman or man. Psychotic creeps on the other hand tend to prey upon the weaker sex, but a woman is just as likely to run into those in the city as she is in the woods. But you say "Wait! There will be people around to help her." Good argument, but a fallacy if you assume good Samaritans abound.

The drive from Albuquerque to the Jemez mountains is minimal, taking about 1 ½ hours. The scenery filled with mountains, sunrises and increasingly more snow. I venture on undeterred and spellbound by the rocks and trees. I arrive at the parking lot for Forest Road 376. There is close to two feet of snow on the ground. I park the car, stare at the snow, let down the window and decide that neither hiking nor biking are my thing; right at this moment at least. I drive 20 miles east to Valles Caldera; formed by a massive volcanic eruption which collapsed in on itself. As I come round a curve the forested slopes give way to a massive bowl, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The volcanic crater, 12 miles wide, is perfectly white and breathtaking. The forested slopes above the crater evergreen and the sky above them cloudless and blue. The sun continues westward and with it the temperature rises. I think again of San Antonio Hot Springs and decide to give it another go.

After parking and looking at the road I notice that some earlier traveler has been considerate enough to pack it down for me, using skis and/or snow shoes. I decide to ride. I wear sneakers, because boots on a bike are too bulky and I will more than likely be walking part of the time. I attach and zip-up my gaiters. I pack water, a towel and extra under garments (in case there are people). I put on my woolen cap, my gloves and my helmet. I start riding.

During the first 500 feet of uphill I begin to understand why people don’t ride in snow. Even with the intense traction of fat tires the rear wheel will not bite, it skids all over the place. But I make it to the top of the hill and am excited to see a long downhill stretch. Heading down I aim for patches of frozen mud and avoid deeper snow, much like driving a car. Then directly after a long patch of dirt I hit the ice -frozen solid with an unfriendly just slightly melted surface. The bike losses it, I disengage myself from the bike and skid 5 feet on my stomach. Yeeehaa! I jump back on the back on, look at the ice so I know what to avoid in the future and ride on. The road has a generally even grade, with slight uphills and significantly more downhill grades for the entire 5.2 miles. It takes all of my concentration and lots of balance, but I stay up most of way. Having learned quickly to avoid ice, to stay in the ruts, to go steadily on, undeterred and happy.

I get to these isolated hot springs and find 8 people submerged in the steaming pool. There is more snow and the view is absolutely pristine. After settling into the water I strike up a conversation, which of course began with familiar questions:“Where’s is the rest of your group?”“It’s just me?”“You came alone?”“Yes.”“Aren’t you afraid?”“No.”They look shocked and doubtful.I continue “Oh, I have a lot of experience out here.”“Really? You’ve been here before?”“No, not here. What I meant was I have a lot of experience in the outdoors. I learned to walk at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”Their eyebrows go up. Perhaps they think I am lying, or at the very least exaggerating. I am not and tell them this with my eyes.“But it’s still dangerous.”“Yes, but I find that if you head into it unafraid then things usually go your way.”

It was hear that I understood, perhaps for the first time, why I often fail so miserably in social settings - I enter them with fear. But out here...alone...I am free, as free as it's possible to be.

The ride up is great too, easier in fact. The tires get great traction on the compacted snow and riding is easy as long as I avoid the icy patches. Overall a worthwhile trip. I was in the right place at the right time and everything worked out. That's life in general, it's all about timing.

Please comment and check out more photos here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/114436305155907830473/albums/5698444753762177953

She had wanted an instrument which allowed her to create music while dancing. But not simply bells on her ankles, not tap shoes on her feet. She wanted something which would fully encompass the sounds she felt while dancing.

She envisioned drums below her feet, drums behind her, a ten foot tall stand of cymbals available to her side. Wrapped around her arms would be stretchy material and attached to the end would be rubber balls which could be thrown against the drums or held in her hands.

They had built her dream and now she danced. Her feet thrilled on the metallic drums, reminding her of dancing on the metal sheets which covered hidden spaces below the sidewalks of Flag. The cymbals sang as she fluttered them with burst from the elastic material on her left arm. The heavy bass drums boomed in happy protest as her right arm flung the rubber high, whipping it back and for in a ten foot fall.

She danced with her entire body. She composed with her mind. The audience roared to its feet as she collapsed in utter abandon, spent and free.

She was on the last leg of the triathlon. She was tired, stretching and preparing for the run. She felt him approach her from behind. He bent and whispered in her ear "You are a jaguar..."

She looked up and over her shoulder in surprise, because no one knew of her obsession with the cats. Her reply "With sad green eyes, wondering what I did to deserve this cage."

"Break free and run like you were on the hunt."

And she did. She ran, muscles taught, but not tight. She ran as if this were all she was ever meant to do. She ran without thought for the future. She ran in a wild race away from the cage. And wildness flew through her veins flexing itself in her heart, pulsing through her quads, and dancing out her toes.

He was in California, sailing off Venice Beach. She in Southern Arizona dancing and singing her way through life. They began telling the most compelling of stories, involving zen, motorcycles, sex and life. Her body swayed as she sang backup for a recording of Hendrix playing Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"; recorded live at Monterey, many decades earlier.

"Zen in the art of..." he begins the story, as she reads his text.

"Motorcycle sex!" she texts in reply.

Seconds later her phone tings "Nearly impossible, but I know some trix".

"Hehe."

"You laugh now..."

"Can laugh then to, as we fly on the bike as one."

"Hmmmm...nearly too graphic to text. You'll see if you ever get on the back of a motor hog with me."

"The two were ... The Harley raced on ... Following the highways arc their intertwined bodies flew ... "

"Long hair blowing wildly through the orange glow as the sun dropped into the Pacific."

"Darkness settled in, but their lives shinned brighter than ever."

Let you mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before, let your soul take you where you long to be…Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you will live as you have never lived before. I found this quote, during my first week at site, on a letter given to me by Peace Corps Staff. It rang for me. Just as life rang while I walked back from a football game. As darkness settled in an almost full moon rose, a little girl (one of my favorites in the village) rides on the back of my bike as I push it towards home, I sing to the children as villagers move in mass around us. The first week at site was spent cleaning, meeting people, “scouting” on my bike (this by far being the best part), understanding a difference in the meaning of time, dancing with the women, ect. Riding my bike through elephant grass twice my height, in a landscape which holds you captive…There is always something new to discover. A termite mound, a little stream which reminds of home, a big open view that spreads before you, villages placed oh so remotely… The simplicity of this village life is full of meaningful activity. Time has definitely slowed for me, though not in that reciprocal to “time flies when you are having fun”. Rather in a way where hustle just is not necessary, for there are many things to do, but if you take your time and enjoy the moment everything is completed by the end of the day, and you feel accomplished, tired and happy. I have started a garden. The first part was to clear the grass, for it was very tall and very thick. I then started turning the soil and planting. I have replanted a mint and aloe plant, which I picked up at training. I have also planted tomatoes, sugar cane, Echinacea, red sun hemp, and Marigolds…I plant to bring in bananas, eggplant, cabbage, squash. The soil is very dark and moist. Though as things dry up I have been told it will become hard due to a lot of clay, and when the rains come it may flood. So what appears to be an Eden may soon become an earthly lot of hard work. Though I do look forward to eating homegrown veggies! The women have been teaching me to dance; in a closed dark room so as to keep the secrets hidden. Though the secrecy is a front for most men and young girls, those who are to be kept in the dark or out of it, know. Their hips flutter like birds and I have finally accepted that I just can’t shake it like they can, though I practice. Some women asked for a women’s group meeting…Women are always women…There are rivalries, laziness, exclusivity and a want for immediate satisfaction that stands in the way…It will happen when it happens. While visiting my BOMA (British Occupancy Management Area) I watched The Band's Last Waltz. In doing felt a homesickness that was refreshing. Not that I was ready to return yet, but that I began to see the forest for the trees. I also watched some BBC news and realized just how important America's spending is to the world???????? As part of the world's financial review the reporter talked of how American's are avoiding big ticket items like automobiles and tending towards discount stores like Walmart. And though Walmart's was experiencing a rise in profits they were not anticipating meeting yearly targets. With consumerism as a way of life, is the pursuit of happiness in vain? I have realized also that my desires to run to the wilderness, like Christopher McCandless or my father, represented a longing for silence and calmness. I have found this in the village; there are disturbances, but they are manageable and not overly distracting.The biggest stressors are: sickness (both humans and animals), witnessing deforestation, and dealing with a neediness felt by those that surround me. Was told the other day by a Zambian man that if a women is not married by the age of 20 there is not hope for her. Why does this bother me?

All quoted material is referenced from Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking” found in a compilation of his work Civil Disobedience and Other Essays. "Knights of a new, or rather an old, order...No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom and independence, which are the capital of this profession…You must be born into the family of the Walkers.” I have known of Thoreau since high school English. I remember an expert from Walden about ants; it resolved some of my confusion regarding war. Then my brother sends me Civil Disobedience and Other Essays. I started “Civil Disobedience” and decided that more discussions of poor governance and war would never resolve my confusion. So I moved onto “Walking”. This essay describes my life; or rather a vital part of it. Nothing soothes my savage beast like a good walk. As a child 5 minutes of walking, through the pines of Northern Arizona, could bring more composure than just about anything I can remember. “More over you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.” If I used day dreams to escape, my imagination soared when walking: on backpacking trips, on the way home from school…As Program Director for Southwest Conservation Corps. “But sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run through my head and I am not where my body is, -I am out of my senses.” Lucky for me even at SCC, where I allowed my job to become my life, I could always escape with a good hike. Some hikes I took while directing were so soothing that I might say they saved my life/job. “Two or three hours walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see. Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufacturers and agriculture, even politics, the most alarming of them all, -I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape.” On one such hike I remember looking up from the spread of Tucson’s lights, which I viewed from atop the Catalina Mountains, to see the moon and a big sky full of stars. It reminded me that I was a tiny speck in a big old universe, and that whether or not I hired enough people or secured enough project weeks really did not matter that much. And that in the end I would be just fine. I heard a family, who was camping next to the spot where I stood, remark on the moon. I felt to shy to join them; so I wrote a note. Letting them know I appreciated their company; though from afar. I slipped it under their wiper, climbed into my Subaru and floated down Catalina Highway. “You may name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest who were the discovers of it. There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any history of America…” I remind myself that I am a tiny speck and whether or not I succeed…Or whether my thoughts help America recapture itself… “Walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentlemen’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before that evil day comes.” Pros: we have our public lands, we are moving towards a widespread environmental consciousness, the world is beautiful. Cons: the beast consumes our wild places ravenously, in times of need our government turns public to private with the signing of a deed, our Dream is currently clouded by consumerism and a biased media.Ahhh…But perhaps I’ve gone too deep. “To forget the old world and it’s institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance left for this” species. Thoreau provides the answer: “I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher and more ethereal, as our sky, -our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains, -our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests, -and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the traveler something, he knows not what, of leata or glabra, of joyous and serene, in our faces. Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?” Yes it is idealistic. But I think the hope of America lies in an obsession with joy and serenity, as opposed to accumulation of property, image, medications, and so on and so forth. This hope requires that each citizen exhibit heroic tendencies “for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.” Stand up America, make the right choices. “That in wildness is the preservation of the world...A town is saved, not more by the righteousness of the men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted...Alas for human culture! Little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers.” “In short all good things are wild and free...American liberty has become a fiction of the past, - as it is to some extent a fiction of the present, -the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.” I have one major criticism of Thoreau’s “Walking”. He demoralizes the very answer which he seeks. “The very winds blew the Indians cornfield into the meadows, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to entrench himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with a plow and a spade.” Tools and language; they make us human. But at this point in time we master so completely, with technology and media; that they truly are entrenching us. So what did the indigenous people of America, and elsewhere, do differently? Or rather what ideology, or religion, guided their lives? I do not know the answer. What I do know is that Western cultures operate under an assumption that this world was created for our use; that humans were given the right to anything and everything from mammal to conifer to mineral. We are not part of this world. “Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around us, with such beauty and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is so exclusively an interaction of man on man, -a sort of breeding in and in, … a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.” Once again I delve too deep. I apologize. I do not mean to criticize. I appreciate the beauty of language, the comforts afforded by modern technologies. But we must redirect our path. I have no words to describe my love of this world and the people which fill it. “I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of the earth cultivated. Part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation it supports.” Must we have the answer to every detail? So many of our resources are dedicated to the accumulation of knowledge. To what end? "A man's ignorance is sometimes not only usefull, but beautiful, -while his knowledge, so called, is often worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with, -he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all? My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bath my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. Live free, child of the mist, -and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist.” While walking my mind flies free. No worries of validity, nor value, tie it down. “We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Koouos, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.” We praise reason and rationality, but do not understand, an understanding that comes not from our eyes nor the left side of our brains, how to live with this world. Have we sacrificed belonging and purpose, in our stoic quest for logic? Thoreau ends his essay with a dreamy description of an imaginary family and accurate account of an earthly sunset. Perhaps the passages seem ill-placed in a critically acclaimed essay? Or do they? “We saunter towards the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than he has ever done, shall perchance shine into our hearts and minds, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn.” Only that it happens before I pass into the great unknown of afterlife.

So I am writing again. Yes! I am open to suggestions on how why my work should be published. On finding an editor. On pretty much anything having to do with words.

It’s cold, rainy, I’m hungry, everything’s wet. I need to start a fire, but I can’t find my matches, or lighter, and anyways there’s no dry wood. But I’m cold and hungry so I’d better figure this out.

I start searching for the key ingredients: spark, fuel, and air’s already there, but since it’s moist I have to find a strong spark and extra flammable fuel.

Low and behold a cute guy provides an unextinguishable spark, in the form of a Zippo lighter.

The cute guy could be youOr if this was your story A cute girl, who could be meSupplies an unextinguishable sparkI have my spark, now I need fuel. Suddenly I remember my green stash, which I saved for a rainy day; now it’s a sacrifice to burn it, but I’m cold and hungry and it will smell good anyways.

So I find some dryish tinder and I sacrifice my enormous quantities of green b-acks.

Sooner than later I have a raging fire. I am warm, I am fed and I have company.

Not only the cute guyWho could be you, or in your caseA cute girl, who could be meBut others as wellThey are drawn like moths to my light. Here we all stand around this raging fire: warm, fed and accompanied by beautiful people.

I decide to jump over the fire, because I like fire jumping. It’s kind’a crazy, in a good way. So many warm-fed-cliquey people are jumping over my fire.

Then something happens – a complaint. And like a chain reaction it can’t be stopped. This fire’s not big enough! Why’d you waist all that precious green? Have you considered the environmental implications of fires?

And then the cute guyWho could be you, or in your caseThe cute girl, who could be meWants their spark back

I’m about to start a fire.

That’s the end of my stongetry, or pongory.

Well I have finished Peace Corps, and I must admit I am glad the goodbyes are over. I thought leaving the States, to join Peace Corps, was difficult. But leaving Zambia proved to be a more intense and more extended version of my first Exodus.

The first stage involved leaving the village; this process lasted about a week. Two days before leaving I hosted a village party; for this I purchased 4 chickens, 2 pigs, and a goat. This seemed like a feast, except for the fact that in the end 4 villages were invited and from those villages about 200 people showed up. Yikes! Anyhow cooking was a riot, eating proved complicated (with so many to feed), and then the speeches began. The headmen spoke, as did the amazing Mr. Chimwemwe (aka JV Zulu) and then I ended with one. The speeches were well received...during my own I knew I had succeeded when the crowd cheered and I felt tingles go all through my body, kinda like goose bumps but more consuming. Anyhow after this I danced for everyone and then it was over. I left two days later, with an group of youngsters running after the Peace Corps cruiser. Bittersweet times! I had done exceptionally well, regarding emotional breakdown, until one of my favorite little girls stopped talking to me or even looking at me. I could not figure out what the problem was; then I realized she was trying not to cry. It's funny I felt loved and like a scoundrel all at the same time.

The second stage, also lasting a week, involved leaving Chipata (Eastern Province's capital city). This stage was more relaxed, less emotionally trying. Mostly I filled out reports and reorganized my life; so as to be ready for the next stage.

Finally I left Peace Corps and Zambia itself. This involved just under a week of medical examines and final meetings. It also involved dancing and eating with friends. Each PCV for Peace Corps/Zambia "rings out" before leaving. There were about 20 of us ringing out so the ceremony was shorter than other ring outs I had attended, but it was sweet as well. Each PCV was given a chance to speak before ringing the bell (well actually a tire rim, not a bell, but it worked). As I stood there waiting for my turn the emotions hit me; even stronger than when the little girl in my village fought so hard against her tears. Graduations, whether from high school, university or in this case Peace Corps, always sneak up on me. During my speech I thanked the staff for the amazing job they had done. Then I said "They told me I would leave Africa smiling...but really I have been smiling every since I got here." As I said this the weight of this amazing experience settled onto me; I was grateful, I was proud, and I felt lucky. I flew out of Lusaka that night. Leaving behind friends whom I will most likely never seen again, leaving behind Zambia: the people, the wildlife, the skies, the dancing, the singing, the smiling.

I was headed to The Gambia, to see my sister and her family, the itinerary loaded with stops. From Zambia we stopped briefly in Malawi and then there was a 3 hour layover in Nairobi. Boarding another plane we flew to Mali and then Senegal. After staying the night in Dakar I finally arrived in The Gambia at 5 o'clock; 36 hours after leaving Lusaka. Flying across the continent of Africa is a complicated affair, but well worth the effort.

Upon arriving I was greeted by a niece, Tima, who rushed into my arms and then did nothing but giggle and waive her arms around for about 30 minutes. Finally she overcame her shyness, a rare occurrence for this beautiful 4 year old, and started chattering away. Then I got to hold my nephew for the first time, he's angelic. A day or two after I arrived I was playing with him on the bed before his nap. Fighting sleep he lifted himself up and I snuggled my head under his. Just after I put my head under his he relaxed and settled in for his nap, using my head as a pillow. I sang to him for a bit and felt his drool run down my cheek. Finally Mom came to my rescue and he was settle into his much more comfortable crib. For the next couple of weeks I slept on the couch and each morning, between 3 and 6 am, Tima would wake me. Sometimes I convinced her to sleep beside me, but others she wanted to talk and no amount of grumbling on my part would dissuade her. I loved every minute of it, but soon decided that I NEEDED an apartment.

I am now living in an apartment by the sea. I have running water, electricity, a TV, hot showers and restaurants all around me. I am thoroughly enjoying myself, most especially because I have lived without these things for the last two years:}

So I do not have time to tell all about Dad and Sagi's recent visit. I have been busy and internet has been a PROBLEM. Anyhow though we had an AMAZING time and there are many stories to tell; which I will eventually. For now I have posted some pics. I hope you enjoy and that you are all smiling and healthy. I am trying to be. Choa for now.

I just had the best Chinese food I have ever eaten. I watched as a man, who works for a construction company owned by China, rolled out the noodles, then efficiently sliced the loop and moved it to the banding portion of the noodles maker (I now want a noodle maker, I mean I had never realized how easy it was. I am not sure I would pull it off quite like he did, but I could try). Anyways after banding the dough he threw it in the boiling water and started rolling out another portion. At one point the pot overflowed with froth, he threw off the lid, turned off the stove and then fiddled with it until the froth reappeared. Then he poured some cold water over the boiling mass and scooped the freshly cooked noodles out with chop-sticks. He poured a broth with chunks of potato, squash and pork on the bone over my noodles and handed it to me.

“Do you use…” he motioned to the chop-sticks not knowing what they were called in English.

“Yes, what do you call them?”

“Quei-zi (kw-i-zi)”

This lovely dish was topped with onion and pepper pickled with an anise-like spice. The broth was light, not greasy, with a subtle flavor that hit my stomach gently.

All this happened in backwoods Zambia. Who’d a thunk it.

And this morning I woke up in a hospital bed, yesterday having ridden in a cab for 2.5 hours to St. Francis Hospital. Puking, moaning, and clutching my side the whole way. I tell you what, you never know what life is going to throw you.

As I left I asked the man driving the truck I was in how to say thank you in Chinese; so that I could tell the cook.

“Xie-Xie (shay-shay)” he said.

I yelled “Xie-Xie” out the window.

The cook nodded and said something I did not catch.

“That means your welcome”.

I looked up to see the cook blushing and then dipping into the kitchen a bit nervously.

Lightning flashes bright against vibrant green over the hills to my left. We drive in and out of sun shine; as the sky fades from pale blue, to glowing white, to deep slate grey. On the radio a woman sings in Chinese; her voice pitched high, her words incomprehensible to me, and perhaps more moving because I do not get them. A flute, which reminds of Irish music, and the san-Xian (the three stringed, long necked instrument) accompanies her.

We reach the rain, or it us. The sky closes in and the narrow asphalt road continues its wind through the hills. A single stripe of white delineating the opposing traffic directions. The Luangwa River is ahead of us, Mocambique to our South.

Thatched huts are scattered along the Great East Road. Here and there a tall red and white cellular tower reaches out of the trees. And the rusted, and stripped, carcass of an automobile reminds of the danger which is an integral part of roads.

A baboon looks, at our passing red pick-up, over his right shoulder as he slips through the mist, off the road, into the trees. Our windshield is now a blur of drops. The open tunnel of road bordered by dark green giants, the fresh grass bursting in green along the shinning silver of the tarmac. Even with the wipers at full blast the road is hard to follow; our pace has slowed to a crawl. Then coming over a rise I see the silhouette of a perfectly shaped hill, there is a thin strip of distant sky which is visible between the upper outline of the hill and the hood of dark rain clouds overhead. In this strip can be seen a sky returned to blue, with clouds formation visible because they are not directly over us.

The Luangwa is starting to fill again. Soon it will reach bank to bank.

“What have you brought for us?” the bridge guard asks. They ask this out of habit; I suppose. Bribery here seems innocent.

“Air. Fresh air” is the drivers reply.

We pass the Baobab which is as big as a house.

I am happy to report that this place still inspires awe; even though I have traveled this road more times than I care count; sickness being the primary cause.

So I wrote this short story recently. I read to the Eastern Province PCVs in a Talent Show and won 2nd prize. It's the first contest I've won for writing and I couldn't be happier with it :) Well maybe I would be happier if it was a widely read short story contest and I won first prize. But as we say here: Baby steps.

PS - I like reading my stories, but seeing as you are all far away this will have to do. Hopefully my voice is present in the writing.

This is a work of fiction.

-------------------------------------Without Control ---------------------------------

"We should talk about birth control” she had spent the last 10 minutes finding the courage to bring up this subject.

They had been tested for STDs so that was not the problem. He knew she was not on the pill or any other type of contraceptive. Also he did not seem overly concerned about using condoms.

They were exclusive; they had not talked about it but she knew. She knew: because he still rushed to find her; because there were still sparks whenever they made eye contact; because they kept each other pretty busy.

They had been “together” for almost a year now. They had known each other for 10 years before getting “together”.

He just sat there looking at her. His eggs and toast sat there looking up at him. His coffee let off a thin but steady stream of steam.

“Look if you can’t even discuss the consequences maybe you shouldn’t commit the act” she was pissed; she hated the fact that it showed. So she left for work.

.

“I mean seriously why do these things have to be so difficult?” she asked her sister over the phone.

“What did you want him to say?”

“Anything would have been better…”

“Do you want kids?”

“If it’s right yes. But honestly I don’t trust him to stay. I mean I’m really happy, really happy. And I would be okay with staying as-is for a good long time. But we’re having sex without control and he can’t even talk about the obvious results.”

“Look sweetie you need to say these things to him; not me. I wish I could help, but this is what you get for falling for an underwear-modeling-outdoorsy-play--boy.”

“Yeah, thanks. How are the kids?”

“They’re good. A handful, but worth it.”

. She was getting ready for lunch. She thought about calling him, but held back. She did not want to push it. Their relationship, having taken 10 years of flirtation to make, was fragile. And as fragile things go it was more precious to her than most things in this world.

Deciding to wait until evening to call she stood up from her desk, intending to find lunch; something light enough to settle in her nervous stomach, but something with substance. The city with all it’s variety seemed daunting.

He walked through her office door.

Relief replaced lunch plans. She smiled happy to see him; with apology as well.

“You wanna get some lunch?” he asked.

She was 5’7”, he had a foot on her. She looked up at him, reading him, or at least trying to. Most of the time his eyes gave him away; a part of him which she had first noticed many years ago. Though sometimes she had absolutely no idea what they were saying.

His eyes stared back. Perhaps reading her as well. Reading her so he would know how to act without crushing their fragility.

Each of them realized the others objective and that was enough to get them smiling.

“Yes, I was just getting ready for lunch.”

Lunch seemed much less complicated with him standing there so obviously relaxed.

“Where were you thinking?” she asked while getting her bag together.

“How about sammies at The Waterfront?”

“Perfect.”

She was at his side, ready to leave her office. He bent down and wrapped his arms around her, kissing the top of her head. She melted against his chest. Seconds later they were walking out the door, his right arm having remained at her waist. .

They had a table on the deck overlooking the water. The air was that perfect temperature. Cool, but not cold. Moist, but not sticky. The sun burst through the clouds in rays that danced on the water. The water rippled gently, it’s colors changing from moment to moment.

The fresh lemonade was spot on. Her sandwich, veggies and cheese on toasted whole grain, hit the spot. His Club disappeared; quickly.

They did not talk about the morning. They did talk about plans for the weekend: a trip up the coast, surfing if it worked out, otherwise just some down time with friends.

“I’ll be home a little late. I want to do some shopping. Are you coming over?”

“I think I’ll stay at my place tonight” he said.

“Alright.”

After paying, outside the restaurant, they said goodbye. He had errands to run across town. She was headed back to work.

Having turned to walk back to the office, she turned again to call him back.

“Hey, can we talk sometime soon?”

“Yes.”

.Now he didn’t always stay at her place. She did not always go to his if they weren’t at hers. Previously their nights had worked out relatively naturally. Though honestly most nights, since their first, had been spent together.

Relationships were funny for her. When single it was very easy to be alone. But having been with him so frequently, lately being alone required some adjustment.

The afternoon was spent feeling hollow, identifying the feeling and then getting over it.

She decided to go to a movie, by herself; after dropping some groceries at home.

Going to the movies solo used to be a favorite pastime. When she was younger it had taken some practice to accept, but after a while she grew to love walking out of a good movie by herself. Her thoughts could roam; the catharsis was more consuming without others there to distract from it. The same went for eating out. Dinner by one’s self is an acquired taste.

But she was out of practice and feeling vulnerable.

The movie was one of the better ones she’d seen lately. It was intelligent, yet fun. The shots edgy but classic. The movie had distracted her, but the day crept into her head. She felt alone; like those times in her early 20s when she first started going to movies by herself.

Walking home she turned on her cell; telling herself not to expect a message. She did not find one; disappointment replaced the lingering catharsis.

Before getting into bed she picked up a photo of her parents. It was taken before she was born. The image showed a young couple holding hands as they walked through tall pines. The pines stood in the darkness of their own shadows. The sun, bright against the shadows, shone upon her parents. But the light in their faces came from within. She was their first child. She knew how their story ended.

Crawling into bed she hugged her pillow and smiled because it was Thursday.

.She dreamt of him and awoke to find that he’d let himself in.

Lifting her head from his chest she studied his sleeping face. Moving past his stubbly chin she noticed a pool of drool on his left peck. She wiped it away. Before they were together it was situations like this that made her hesitate. Waking up to find that she had drooled on his chest would surely send him running. But this had happened before and he didn’t really mind. He’d said it was cute.

She got out of bed to wash the drool off her hand and to shower.

After showering she found him still sleeping. Looking out her bedroom window she watched the mist move through the skyscrapers.

From behind he hugged her. She snuggled in and they stood for a while; waking with the city.

“Look I’m not trying to pressure you into ANYTHING. We just have to talk about this.”

“I know, I got scared” he said.

“I’ve been taking the morning after, but it’s not healthy. I don’t like the pill. I could just figure out something, but this is on your shoulders as well.”

“I know.”

“You say that, but if I get pregnant and you get scared, you can walk away. I can’t.”

“What do you want?”

“I want us.”

“Kids don’t figure into us?”

“I’m afraid kids might destroy us.”

“Why?”

She took a deep breath, puffing her cheeks out with the exhale. She rested her head in the subtle valley between his pecks and let her body relax against his. She thought for a minute about the photo of her parents. Maybe she was the one who was scared. Then she remembered his reaction.

“Because we can’t even talk about the possibility.” ...

-Written morning of Nov 14, 2009

So at this point I am wrapping up my Peace Corps Service. Lately it has been feeling like the end. At times I feel I am ready for it all to be done. I am tired for I have: been in a car accident; taken more medications than I ever thought possible; mitigated terrorism in Malawi; been disappointed in Mozambique; survived break-ins; been surrounded by hunger & sickness. But all of that is the wrong side of the coin. When doing staff trainings I told my crew leaders that the most effective leaders in this world are those people who can find the positive in any situation. For those people are able to achieve a happy ending no matter what this world sends their way.

So here is me leading myself to a happy completion of PC. By April I will have spent 26 months living in Africa. Among: the smiling faces; the mega fauna; under the at times hot-hot sun; in the thunderstorms; the lakes; the oceans; the forests and mini-buses; meeting fellow travelers, who have helped me to see this world in an entirely new light; laughing with the amazing group of people that is Peace Corps; dancing, singing, learning and dancing again.

It would be impossible for me to encapsulate in words all the good I have been a part of here. Seeing women shine because English is not so hard to learn after all; watching two friends, who have spent the last 80 years growing old together, laugh at life’s misfortunes; swimming under the moon in the Indian Ocean; watching a fisherman cast into that ocean from a shipwreck surrounded by waves; swimming, 15 meters under Lake Malawi’s surface, around an old VW and watching the little cichlids pass above the seats and out of the trunk; waking Mom so she could watch Ground Hornedbills promenade along the Luangwa River; seeing Jim happier than I have ever seen him after his first walking Safari; dancing to Akon at The Lounge, at Alpha, in my hut, in cruisers; cooking Thanksgiving with 40 other Volunteers at the Chipata House; eating termites for the first time; teaching about Conservation Farming with Mr. Chimwemwe as a translator; reading The Lorax to anyone and everyone; giving a condom demonstration while the students squirmed and tried not to laugh, then telling them it was up to them to take care of each other; looking forward to introducing Dad to Africa and seeing my little sis’ for the first time in over 2 years; talking to everyone from home while they were all in Flag; walking in the twilight of evening as I sang to the children who follow me; stepping outside my hut to see a sky full of stars for the first time since the rains began, then looking to the east to watch clouds lit from within by lightning; growing soya, maize and sunflower along side this community; hosting first site visit; chasing Zambian children for the first time during my own first site visit; shaving a spiral into my hair; outlining and starting a book; Victoria Falls glowing in the moonlight; planning to climb Kilimanjaro; working with BaDon; training with Henry and giving him hell for being a Bemba; diggin perm-a-garden beds in my yard; … The list goes on.

So maybe our lives are like a river. Lets, for fun, say we are buoyant in that river. We start high up near the continental divide, where the water is fresh, it’s cold yet clean; nothing really makes sense; staying afloat requires more effort as currents get stronger, pebbles turn to boulders. We learn, we figure some things out and gently float into a big shallow lake; here there seems to be no outlet the water is extremely salty, floating requires no effort, the sky above is perfectly reflected around us so that we seem to be bounded by cloud and the infinite blue. For a while the safety is comforting; it occurs that we could settle in this bubble where water flows in but never out. Then we begin to miss the unkown, the challenges suddenly seem desirable, but where to go? We realize the more we focus on this stuck feeling to harder life becomes; so we decide to relax and enjoy the easy floating. As we do this we notice evaporative processes. We let go and are lifted upwards no longer part of the reflection but creating it instead. We weather the storm enjoying the excitement of lightening, the blasts of thunder and then we fall from the thunderhead; with it’s white tops lit by a setting sun and it’s slate grey bottom turned deep purple. Perhaps we fall into yet another lake. This one deep and encircled by desert. We float through the houseboats and bumps of jet skies. Then we are sucked through the hydroelectric turbines, twist our way through a granite gorge, another dam and then are floating in a deep placid river. Our buoyancy is not as great as in that silent lake, but life is good. Finally we reach the sea, the ocean, the big mighty waters. Our buoyancy increases and we become part of a body much larger than ourselves. Looking back we enjoy the whole picture, seeing all of the parts enables us to understand that an easier path would not have made a better bed. That the challenges, especially those times when the most challenging part was no challenge at all, gave life character.

Anyhow Peace Corps is a fantastic experience. They say it’s “the hardest job you’ll ever love”. I must say I’ve had more difficult jobs. That my struggles here are different, more manageable. That I want to stop qualifying my life. To appreciate each part, for attitude is everything.

At one point in my life I thought that “loving someone did not have to make a girl vulnerable”. Just before this realization I had told someone I loved him. This someone was perhaps the most dangerous man I have ever met. Dangerous because he made me feel amazing in a way that no one else ever has. Dangerous because I saw us growing old together and wanted that more than anything. Dangerous because after I told him how I felt he said I was selfish and naïve. So in facing this rejection I was forced to look myself in the mirror and acknowledge a difficult truth. This being that I run from vulnerability; the thing in this world which renders me most vulnerable is attraction to a guy. Accepting this part of myself I decided that being interested in someone does not require defensive measures on my part. I never let that dangerous guy get anywhere close to me, because I knew that I would not survive if he felt less than I. The irony is perhaps that what drove him away the most was my defensiveness. And he did feel less than I, yet here I am making the same mistake.

Now this all happened four years ago and I would like to say that I took my own advice and grew up. But recently I am 0 for 3 in the guys department. Meaning of the last three guys I have been interested in none have returned the feeling. By interested I simply mean spending some quality time together; not marriage. Anyhow, those are tough odds.

I am not saying that I loved these three guys. In the strict sense I did not know them enough to feel anything close to the big L-word. But I sure did like parts of them, just a I “loved” parts of the dangerous one. The way this one danced, or the sadness another carried so bravely, or that ones youthful belief in all things good, mostly the way they all smiled and looked me in the eyes. A friend once told me “Aurora perhaps he does not mean what you think he means when he looks at you that way.” Well what do they mean?

When will someone make a move? Because I am tired of making all the moves; and in all truth getting no where. Here’s the thing guys that don’t make moves won‘t make moves. Either because they are not interested, or because they don’t know how to. Or perhaps I am blind to the subtleties. In any case I am feeling vulnerable because I made another move and once again he said no.

Later…So someone I was interested made a move. This time was different than any other. However, he read my Chimwemwe blog, assumed I was proposing marriage and is no longer interested. Now for those of you who’ve read my stuff you know I don’t really talk about things like marriage and children all that often. The reason I refrained from writing about these topics in the past was to avoid situations like this. From where I stand this situation is so completely ironic that all I can do is laugh. And hope that somewhere down the road he will understand and forgive me my indiscretion. That he will look back and be able laugh about a girl he once knew, who spent the better part of her youth looking for something which was inevitably tied to the very thing she was avoiding.

Chimwemwe is the Nyanja word for happiness; it inferrs an enduring happiness. Some one called me Chimwemwe Phiri the other day. I had told her my name was Kuwala Phiri; she got mixed up. Kuwala is the closes translation I could come up with for Aurora, b/c Aurora here in Zambia is a difficult name; Rs are not pronounced. And so most call me Lola; which I did not like for a long time and have come to tolerate. Phiri is a common last name in this area, meaning hills. I adopted this surname mostly for fun, but also because my homestay family were Phiris.

Anyhow the slip in my name I appreciated as I am writing a children’s book based on The Lorax and have decided to call it Mr. Chimwemwe. I came up with the name because the most highly motivated community mobilizer in my area has been given the affectionate nickname Mr. Chimwemwe. He goes by JV Zulu, but if you know him Mr. Chimwemwe fits perfectly. He lives away from the village, because there are more trees. When he was young he left rural Petuake to work in the industrial Copperbelt. Before leaving he planted a tree and made a promise to himself that some day he would return to build a home next to it.

The revision of The Lorax will be geared towards Zambia. With Elephants instead of Brown Barbaloots, Ground Hornbills instead of Swamy Swans, Hippos, Giraffes, Lions and the like. The narrator will be a Baobab. Mr. Chimwemwe will be the champion of the trees.

An enduring happiness…What more can we ask for from life? Marriage, adventure, health and wealth; not worth much without happiness. And in this world endurance is necessary in all things. Especially a thing as fleeting, as delicate as joy.

When I was a teenager happiness eluded me. Then in my early twenties it filled my life almost to the bursting. Tragedy threatened to snatch it away. This terrified me and the more I attempted to gain it back the faster it receded. It took some years, but I began to understand that in order to maintain a steady smile I had to accept that at times sadness would replace it. Then when my smile returned I appreciated it all the more.

Now I am able to maintain a balance; at least somewhat. Floating through the good times and acknowledging that bad times are inevitable. But that if I can relax, if I can learn, in the end happiness will return to me. That is what an enduring happiness means to me.

Marriage used to be this romantic idea; in my minds eye it would have to be perfect or I was not having it. These days I have begun to understand that it too requires persistence. I am still far from achieving anything close to permanence in the intimate relationship department; due largely to a fear of commitment driven by a desire to avoid vulnerability. But perhaps I am on my way. This understanding, that marriage will never be painless, is new. With time perhaps it will dissolve the fear which prompts flight.

I would hope that adventure will be ever present in my life. But I want a symbiotic relationship between adventure and happiness. So that each feeds the other. For when we seek the extreme in hopes that happiness will be the result we are in fact running. Running in the hopes to fill a void, in hopes that if we move continually we can leave the emptiness behind.

Wealth does not mean capital. Capital should be no more than the means by which we facilitate the logistics of life. The more I recognize aspects of my life which bring me happiness, the more I understand exactly how rich I am. The most valuable things in life are non-monetary. For me these things are: a wealth of experience in the outdoors; multitudes of good people in my life; an understanding that most people will return a smile; years of learning, loving, laughing; the ability to cook without cookbooks, to dance regardless of judgment, to sing anywhere and everywhere, to write as a means of understanding.

Some 40 years later JV returned to find his tree grown tall. He, his wife and their children live next to the tree. JV left the Copperbelt 2 years before completing the allotted time required to receive a pension. He left because his happiness seemed in danger of dissipating permanently. Today he is one of the happiest people I have ever met. He does not regret forfeiting his pension.

Paul Simon, as a musician, never ceases to amaze me. Have been listening to Rhythm Of The Saints lately; in part because after about 20 years Graceland has lost it’s draw. I guess I listened to it too much. Like Marley’s Legend, Dylan’s Desire, Joplin’s Greatest, Hendrix’s Experience, U2‘s Joshua Tree; and more recently Ani’s everything, Akon’s Freedom, Shakira’s Grandos Exicitos, Chow‘s Raining in Paradise, chant Down Babylon... Earlier today I sat atop a boulder looking out over my village and the distant plains leading to mountains. I was dancing to “She Moves On” atop this rock; which I bouldred to the top of. As I listened I choreographed a dance. So I sit high up among the trees, looking over charred field and untouched forest which as yet have not burned. On the way up to my look-out I had walked over a spongy forest floor; years of leaf litter built upon itself to form a moss like texture and excellent soil fertility. Anyhow with my headphones at almost full blast I danced and sang to myself; utterly enjoying the moment. Looking down, quite a good distance, I notice that a woman from one of the nearby villages has spotted me. She is far off and can probably only hear mummers of my singing and definitely cannot see my headphones; I am not sure she even knows what headphones are. She has stopped in either concern or amusement. Has the Muzungu lost her head? she asks herself. I wave and emphasize a shimmy. She waves back. She moves on.

It is winter here. I am wearing boots, a rarity, and a wind-breaker and scarf. I like the colors. Burnt orange of fallen leaves, subtle gold of the dying grasses and black, charred black of burnt everything. A friend and I recently discussed how we had thought Slash and Burn Agriculture a practice of the past. It is not. Though right now, in my region, the burning happens to scare out the mice; not necessarily for agricultural purposes. Mice are another delicacy; this one I have absolutely no intention of sampling. Anyhow the damage, caused by burning, is desertification. Loss of Savannah, loss of soils, loss of fertility. So it took me a moment to realize why the spongy forest floor was so unique. This area still had trees, no slashing as of yet. This area had not burned, layers of decay provided the sponge effect. Untouched Old Growth, or as close to it as I would find within a 20 kilometer radius.

As I listen to U2’s “Moment of Surrender” a short story flirts it’s way through my head. It is good to have music again; my muse. My iPod has been down for the last 7 months. Music is my most successful weapon against homesickness; music reminds me of home and of how I came to be here. Lyrics and links of chords produce feelings within me that cry to be let out in creative expression.

She behaved like a woman with too many men in her life. He thought she had been smiling at him. Where in her reality she had been smiling at her reflection in the darkened window. The sun shone wintery bright above her head. The snow from last night swirled around her green knee-high boots. Smiling because at the moment her mind tackled the question of what they all saw; she saw her reflection. At that moment instead of criticizing the image, she simply understood. So she smiled back at the smiling face. He received the beam through the pane of glass which hid him from her view.

It is good to finally be home again; after months of moving on. Good to return to the slow pace of life in the vil. To the simple food and predictability of days. To write and listen to good music.

We are surrounded by 10 Giraffes. They encircle us in a perfect tower. We are driving north, deep into the park, towards lions and crocs…Towards a different sort of might. An might that rivals the inanimate strength of Vic Falls. After leaving the giraffes our driver and guide, Robby, quickens our pace. We are in a topless, and windshield less, land cruiser making our way through Mopane woodlands mixed with Ebony and Umbrella trees. We have just left behind a herd of 500+ Cape Buffalo. One of these massive, and reputedly aggressive, animals stood alone in the shade next to a lagoon which stood out in green protest to the dry savannah. At first we thought the buffalo was a grandmother. Seeking solitude from the bustle of the heard. We commented on how tired she appeared. Our guide corrected the sex; identifying the buffalo as a male. We laughed at our supposed knowledge of this world so different form anything we had ever experienced. The buffalo slowly makes its way our way. We notice that the old-timer is limping, and postulate about the cause. I think the animals right rear leg is the cause. We are on the animals left and cannot see the right side clearly. We turn to photograph the large herd. A couple minutes later I turn back to the rogue buffalo and discover the cause of it’s wounded disposition. It’s tail has been replaced by a gaping hole. The missing part was not bitten off, but ripped from the spine. Lions!

One this trip is Mom, Jim, me and a couple visiting from the Congo. They are both health workers; the guy from Paris and his girl from Austria. They are both serious photographers. His camera has a 300x magnification; mine has 8x. Anyhow after leaving the giraffes and buffalo we move into a wash and the Parisian protests the dust. The Austrian hands him her sweater to cover the lens and head. “Hold on we have to dress the camera” this from me; they both laugh. We continue north and drive into a green meadow, spotted with Puku, Warthog and Zebra. There is a tree close to the edge of the river. From it’s shade can be seen Hippos, Crocs, Bee Eaters, and across this watercourse the opposite bank. We stop for our picnic; a feast packed by Flat Dogs. As our guide sets up we settle into the area. A bush is designated, after inspection by our armed guard, to answer the call of nature. I spot a solitary hippo, further up the bank than any of the others. It reminds me of the buffalo. I inspect it with the binocs. It mouth hangs slack, the sand of the river on it’s lips. “I think that hippo is dead.” Everyone else starts to looks, and discuss. “Yes it looks dead.” “It must have died very recently, because there are no Vultures, no Hyenas; the animal is intact.” “I want to see their feet.” “Can we go inspect it?” “Well maybe after lunch, I can drive us over there first and then maybe we can get out.” We eat, observe the Elephants perusing the opposite bank, we check the Dead Hippo, we nap. The sun passes it’s zenith, starting it’s slow sink to the west. Or rather the sun holds it’s position and our planet continues it rotation, at 1,000 miles/hour, to what we have designated east. From Robby “The Dead Hippo is walking” he’s not shocked. We all jump to our feet; shocked in the extreme. After the initial disappointment, we were happy for it’s life but really wanted the chance to inspect, we laugh at yet another incorrect assumption.

Lunch wraps up and we clamber into the truck. We had seen they work of big cats, but not the prides themselves. We were on the hunt; to capture images. The night before we had spent 30 minutes with a leopard. A BIG male hunting puku. It was unbelievably close. It’s noble nose and rippling muscles must have been the talk of this stretch of river. There were 6 of us on the drive that night. A couple Dutch youngsters in search of their last item on the Big 5 list. And a quiet Canadian. We are all spell bound by this silent speed of this sleek animal. Gotta love adrenaline. Anyhow we found no lions as we drove through the plains. Many birds, but no cats. Then as darkness fell we spotted more spots. This leopard was smaller and hunting puku as well. Only this time we had company. 2 other trucks had found the cat as well. The night before we had been alone with the male leopard. This time seemed much more intrusive with all the lights shining on both prey and predator. The guides with spot lights did not blind the puku, but still watching the hunt was stressful as opposed enthralling.

The next morning I get my own truck to go anywhere I would like. Ed has a day off and comes along with me. Ed has been with Flat Dogs for a couple of months. A most accomodating host. A Brit. As we drive into an open meadow scattered with Mopane trunks we find some very large black birds with Red heads and white tipped wings. “Ground Hornedbills! They always remind me of monks” says Ed. I wonder why; to me they look like a couple buzzards with biggish bills. “They make the most amazing sound and walk in formation.” I am unimpressed we drive on to find a field with a tower of giraffe and zebra that walk beneath them. These tower makes the zebra look miniature. As we finish tea a pack of African Wild Dogs appears from the bushes. Ed is thrilled; wild dogs are rare and he has not seen them yet. We quickly pack up and drive towards where they lounge in the shade. There are no other trucks and the dogs mearly raise their heads as we pull up. Watching them I sense a unit rather than 8 individuals. We leave them to their rest. We head off to find Robert the tame warthog. He was raised by humans; after being orphaned as a wee warthoglette. He warms up to us and soon I am wrestling him by his tusks. It is amazing to be able to examine at least one of these wild animals.

Our last morning at Flat Dogs I hear an unusual call while waking up. I discover 4 ground horned bills making their way along the river bank. Nodding their heads in formation and chanting this deep, loud and simple rhythm. I find Mom, she loves the horned bills. We watch their procession in awe. Ed was correct in his description. They are like monks.

Our last 2 days at South Luangwa National Park were spent at a bush camp; hosted by Wildlife. We were the only guests out in the camp. A guard, guide and cheif accompany us. We spend the days walking along the river back, play cards and relaxing. Our last night we hear lions roaring just across the river from us. the deep growls send shivers up my spine. I go to sit with the guys out by the fire. They are stoking it up. The there are 2 lions, they roar to eachother and to the male-less pride which frequents the area. Boasting their strength to impress the ladies. We decide to track them in the morning. climbing into our own truck, sent by Wildlife we khead back into the park. We track with the vehicle and after finding some promising prints head after them on foot. With David, the armed gaurd, in front and the rest of us following him closely. Our guide Andrew scolds us if we fall behind to make snaps. As the brush gets thickers we get quieter and stay closer without having to be told. There are tracks, there is prey, where are they? We move through bush and meadow. The meadow is a maze of cracked mud; I begin to understand the impalas plight. With their slender legs running from cats must be a difficult task. We find an Ebony trees which is fruiting and spend 15 minutes eating the delicious green fruits. We find no lions and must return for our flight is approaching. It is hard to leave.

10 million liters per second. This year was the highest water level since 1958. Though we arrived at Mosi O-Tunya at the perfect time, because the water level has dropped and therefore the mist cloud has reduced enough to allow views of the falls. We also arrived at the right time of month, as the moon is full.

First though let us talk of the river and it’s geomorphology. So there was a volcano which expelled red hot flowing lava over a vast area; creating a plateau. This molten rock cooled and hardened; cracking in the cooling process, leaving deep crevices. Then a couple million years later a lake formed over this now solid rock formation. The waters flowing into this lake carried sediment from the north; the sediments settled into the crevices. The lake dried up and was forgotten. Millions of years passed, the sediments hardened into sand stone. Trees grew on the old lake bed, mega fauna grazed on the prolific flora which thrived due to the sludge left by the lake. And then water found it’s way back. In the form of a river this time. The river, in search of the sea flowed over the sandstone filled crevices slowly dissolving them. As the sandstone disappeared the crevices reappeared and the water fell over them. These waters came from the northwestern part of what is now Zambia. After falling the river made it’s way southeast, through what is now Mozambique, finally opening its mouth to the Indian Ocean. Now in the Southern African region rain come is great bursts from November to April. The rains then stop and from May to October there are no rains. So after millions of years the river ate it’s way through the plateau; eating at the sandstone and breakings away chunks of the volcanic rocks bit by bit.

Today I sit at a bed and breakfast 10 kilometers from Victoria falls. The rains have stopped, but the rivers still floods. My mother and I canoed down 25 kilometers of the Upper Zambezi. 25 kilometers of a 2,700 kilometer river. We saw lot’s of birds: bee eaters, rollers, eagles, king fishers, herons, ect. We also saw hippos, crocs and water monitor lizards. Mostly we had a relaxing float down an amazing river. And then removed ourselves from the momentum before these waters pitched themselves into 110 meters of free-fall. The falls, 150 million years in the making, flow into a 1.7 kilometer crevice. The crevice, which as mentioned above is 110 meters in depth, is about 500 meters wide. The water flows over the length of the crevice and hit’s the base of the crack. Some of the water begins to flow down the crack, at a 90 degree the previous flow path. Some of the water is pushed upwards and against the opposite walling of this relatively narrow canyon. This upwards motions turns into a mist cloud then drops onto the opposite wall of our crevice; creating cloudless rainfall, which is a blast to walk through. Mosi O-Tunya National Park has created a network of pathways which lead visitors to the most exceptional views of the falls. Pathways which pass under the Smoke That Thunders (Mosi O-Tunya).

This is what Jim sees as he flies over the falls in a micro light…The Zambezi flowing at a width of 1.7 kilometers, about 1 mile, as it reaches the edge. It then drops 110 meters and turns to flow perpendicular to it’s previous path; sending up a cloud of mist. From here it flows downward to a break in the crevices wall which is about 500 meters wide. So in a distance of 500 meters 10 million liters of water rotate 180 degrees and narrow from 1.7 kilometers to 0.5 kilometers. AWESOME!

Following a path down the back side of the ridge across from the falls Jim, Mom and I make our way through a troop of baboons. They play among the rocks, munch on the shrubs and a mother climbs quickly up a vine to protect her baby. We wade through streams passing below the jungle to the Boiling Pot. A massive whirlpool in the river. The river winds its way through a serious of gorges after passing through the narrow gap at its base. There are people bungee jumping off the bridge which crosses the gorge and baboons eat fruits off the trees. They come running when I pull out a snack of gouda and SaltyCracks. They don’t attach me as I put the food away, but sit very close and eat some leaves so as to appear uninterested. HumPH! They say.

The point of all this is that Syd, Claire & Phillip, and I visited the falls last nite. We were there because the moon was one night from being full. We were expecting greatness, we found some of the most breathtaking views I have ever witnessed. First there was mist bow lit by moon light. You lean over a railing above and to the right of the falls. And down below amidst sheer volcanic rock walls softened by moisture in the air, snowy white cascades and misty clouds you see ROY G. BIV in his perfect arch. Above the falls the river is a smooth black surface broken by the white lace of water disturbed by the rock below. If you walk along the paths which face the falls you see the full cascades lit by moonlight, which causes the falling waters to glow. Part of the pathways is a narrow foot bridge which leads over a thin ridge of rock. If you brave the mist which falls continuously on the bridge you will be rewarded with a complete circular mist and moon bow. You can see this bow on either side of the bridge. To the left the bow, with a faint white shine in it’s center, is suspended above jungle. To the right above the falls.

The next afternoon Mom, Jim and I boat out to Livingstone Island for High Tea hosted by the Royal Livingstone; the king of hotels, in the region, which mimics colonial times. A guide leads us to points from which we can lean over and watch the water flowing by our feet hit the bottom of the crevice and spray up in a dance of swirls. We have tea and snacks seated in a tent, which reminds Jim of Hemmingway, 30 meters from the edge. The lunch is superb, the view priceless. We rest before heading to the falls the walk through the moonlit wonderland. As the bows can be seen the night of the full moon as well as the night before and after. Africa…………

Am I ready? Four new “kids” should be arriving with Clement any time now. Clement works from Chipata, he is our PGSO. He drives a lot and takes care of our Provincial House. These four are young in regards to life in Africa; beyond that I know nothing about them. They landed in Zambia, via a staging event in DC, 2 days earlier. I participated in the same training regime 1 year ago. My how it has flown. Have I changed?

I have high hopes; though life has taught me that expectations should be avoided at all cost, still I dream. My hopes include: interest on their part, capable hosting on my part, Scrabble, good food, laughter, ect ect ect. My APCD, who arranges training events, asked me numerous times to host First Site Visit. I, in an attempt to subtly decline, neither accepted nor refused. He continued asking; I gave in. I have been participating in similar events since 2000, when I started Corps work. For the most part I enjoy the newness of trainings: the meeting of people, the sharing of lives, the communal enthusiasm for service and experiential learning. So why was I hesitant to host? Because there is, of course, as dark side to those silver linings. A deep slate grey that promises lightning and downpours; mostly it involves facing reality and the disillusionment that keeps it company. Though I love me a good thunderstorm, I fear the emotions which here I attempt to symbolize in natural processes. I do not relish the idea of convincing another that the challenge will in the end prove worthwhile. Mostly I dreaded hearing complaints regarding a place and job which I have come to love. Another component to my hesitation involved my personal aptitude. Would I fail them: as hostess or human? So many worries, but I agreed in the end.

They arrive. We push through the initial nerves and proceed to enjoy ourselves thoroughly. I walk them through the LIFE program in Kaloko Village. We are highly productive in a relaxed sort of way. We learn, play, sing and laugh. I succeed as hostess. Mostly I succeed in being myself without succumbing to a fear of judgment; which has plagued my previous experiences. Their enthusiasm is unforced and abundant; their company full of smiles and assurances. For three days we experience an ideal training environment. There are downpours and thunder in the distance, but our enjoyment shines through in a spray of golden light.

This time my hopes were realized, my fears invalidated. Perhaps I have finally succeeded in understanding social interactions…Perhaps we were all granted a model training event; which proves that the realization of ideals is possible and provides a bona fide example to guide future events.

This time I way ready. Their presence in my home illuminated the positive changes influenced by a year in Zambia.

All quoted material is referenced from Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking” found in a compilation of his work's "Civil Disobedience and Other Essays". All titles are denoted by quotation marks; as underline does not work here.

“Knights of a new, or rather an old, order...No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom and independence, which are the capital of this profession…You must be born into the family of the Walkers.” I have known of Thoreau since high school English. I remember an expert from "Walden" about ants; it resolved some of my confusion regarding war. Then my brother sends me "Civil Disobedience and Other Essays". I started “Civil Disobedience” and decided that more discussions of poor governance and war would never resolve my confusion. So I moved onto “Walking”. This essay describes my life; or rather a vital part of it. Nothing soothes my savage beast like a good walk. As a child 5 minutes of walking, through the pines of Northern Arizona, could bring more composure than just about anything I can remember. “More over you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.” If I used day dreams to escape, my imagination soared when walking: on backpacking trips, on the way home from school…As Program Director for Southwest Conservation Corps. “But sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run through my head and I am not where my body is, -I am our of my senses.” Lucky for me even at SCC, where I allowed my job to become my life, I could always escape with a good hike. Some hikes I took while directing were so soothing that I might say they saved my life/job. “Two or three hours walking will carry my to as strange a country as I ever expect to see. Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufacturers and agriculture, even politics, the most alarming of them all, -I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape.” On one such hike I remember looking up from the spread of Tucson’s lights, which I viewed from atop the Catalina Mountains, to see the moon and a big sky full of stars. It reminded me that I was a tiny speck in a big old universe, and that whether or not I hired enough people or secured enough projects really did not matter that much. And that in the end I would be just fine. I heard a family, who was camping next to the spot I stood, remark on the moon. I felt to shy to join them; so I wrote a note. Letting them know I appreciated their company; though from afar. I slipped it under their wiper, climbed into my Subaru and floated down Catalina Highway.

“You may name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest who were the discovers of it. There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any history of America…” So I am writing a book. It is about my realization of the American Dream. I have it outlined. The prologue and the first chapters are complete. I write about it now fearing I may jinx it. My heart flutters even putting it into words. But I remind myself that I am a tiny speck and whether or not I succeed…Or whether my thoughts help America recapture itself… “Walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentlemen’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before that evil day comes.” Pros: we have our public lands, we are moving towards a widespread environmental consciousness, the world is beautiful. Cons: the beast consumes our wild places ravenously, in times of need our government turns public to private with the signing of a deed, our Dream is currently clouded by consumerism and a biased media.Ahhh…But perhaps I’ve gone too deep. “To forget the old world and it’s institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance left for this” species. Thoreau provides the answer: “I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher and more ethereal, as our sky, -our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains, -our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests, -and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the traveler something, he knows not what, of leata or glabra, of joyous and serene, in our faces. Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?” Yes it is idealistic. But I think the hope of America lies in an obsession with joy and serenity, as opposed to accumulation of property, image, medications, and so on and so forth. This hope requires that each citizen exhibit heroic tendencies “for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.” Stand up America, make the right choices. “That in wildness is the preservation of the world...A town is saved, not more by the righteousness of the men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted...Alas for human culture! Little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers.”

“In short all good things are wild and free...American liberty has become a fiction of the past, - as it is to some extent a fiction of the present, -the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.” I have one major criticism of Thoreau’s “Walking”. He demoralizes the very answer which he seeks. “The very winds blew the Indians cornfield into the meadows, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to entrench himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with a plow and a spade.” Tools and language; they make us human. But at this point in time we master so completely, with technology and media; that they truly are entrenching us. So what did the indigenous people of America, and elsewhere, do differently? Or rather what ideology, or religion, guided their lives? I do not know the answer. What I do know is that western cultures operate under an assumption that this world was created for our use; that humans were given the right to anything and everything from mammal to conifer to mineral. We are not part of this world. “Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around us, with such beauty and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is so exclusively and interaction of man on man, -a sort of breeding in and in, … a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.” Once again I delve too deep. I apologize. I do not mean to criticize. I appreciate the beauty of language, the comforts modern technologies afford. But we must redirect our path. I have no words to describe my love of this world and the people which fill it. “I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of the earth cultivated. Part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation it supports.” Must we have the answer to every detail? So many of our resources are dedicated to the accumulation of knowledge. To what end? "A man's ignorance is sometimes not only usefull, but beautiful, -while his knowledge, so called, is often worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with, -he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all? My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bath my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. Live free, child of the mist, -and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist.” While walking my mind flies free. No worries of validity, nor value, tie it down.

“We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Koouos, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.” We praise reason and rationality, but do not understand, an understanding that comes not from our eyes nor the left side of our brains, how to live with this world. Have we sacrificed belonging and purpose, in our stoic quest for logic? Thoreau ends his essay with a dreamy description of an imaginary family and accurate account of an earthly sunset. Perhaps the passages seem ill-placed in a critically acclaimed essay? Or do they? “We saunter towards the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than he has ever done, shall perchance shine into our hearts and minds, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn.” Only that it happens before I pass into the great unknown of afterlife.

Where the Giant Kingfisher feasts on Cichlids. Where Fish Eagles, by the names of CondoleeezzzaRice and FidelCastro, swoopp in to capture fish thrown (by our Malawian guides; it is there lake after all) from our boat and mate happily. I know feeding wild life is a bad practice, but to see them up close; it was priceless. And there names told in a thick Malawian accent; who can beat that.

After climbing and then cliff diving into that beautiful lake and I swim off to inspect some ruins. I contemplate the difficulties I was having with my travel mates. And I decide this: I am shortish, and oldish and brownish and mossy. And pretty much I relate more the Lorax than most other things. But that's me...

(The following is of course the Doctor's work, but it seemed fitting):

At the far end of town

where the Grickle-grass grows

and the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows

and no birds ever sing excepting old crows...

is the Street of the Lifted Lorax. And deep in the Grickle-grass, some people say,

if you look deep enough you can still see, today,

where the Lorax once stood

just as long as it could

before somebody lifted the Lorax away. What was the Lorax?

And why was it there?

And why was it lifted and taken somewhere

from the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows?

The old Once-ler still lives here.

Ask him. He knows. You won't see the Once-ler.

Don't knock at his door.

He stays in his Lerkim on top of his store.

He lurks in his Lerkim, cold under the roof,

where he makes his own clothes

out of miff-muffered moof.

And on special dank midnights in August,

he peeks

out of the shutters

and sometimes he speaks

and tells how the Lorax was lifted away. He'll tell you, perhaps...

if you're willing to pay. On the end of a rope

he lets down a tin pail

and you have to toss in fifteen cents

and a nail

and the shell of a great-great-great-

grandfather snail. Then he pulls up the pail,

makes a most careful count

to see if you've paid him

the proper amount. Then he hides what you paid him

away in his Snuvv,

his secret strange hole

in his gruvvulous glove. Then he grunts, "I will call you by Whisper-ma-Phone,

for the secrets I tell you are for your ears alone." SLUPP!

Down slupps the Whisper-ma-Phone to your ear

and the old Once-ler's whispers are not very clear,

since they have to come down

through a snergelly hose,

and he sounds

as if he had

smallish bees up his nose. "Now I'll tell you,"he says, with his teeth sounding gray,

"how the Lorax got lifted and taken away... It all started way back...

such a long, long time back...

Way back in the days when the grass was still green

and the pond was still wet

and the clouds were still clean,

and the song of the Swomee-Swans rang out in space...

one morning, I came to this glorious place.

And I first saw the trees!

The Truffula Trees!

The bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees!

Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze. And, under the trees, I saw Brown Bar-ba-loots

frisking about in their Bar-ba-loot suits

as they played in the shade and ate Truffula fruits. From the rippulous pond

came the comfortable sound

of the Humming-Fish humming

while splashing around.

But those trees! Those trees!

Those Truffula Trees!

All my life I'd been searching

for trees such as these.

The touch of their tufts

was much softer than silk.

And they had the sweet smell

of fresh butterfly milk. I felt a great leaping

of joy in my heart.

I knew just what I'd do!

I unloaded my cart. In no time at all, I had built a small shop.

Then I chopped down a Truffula Tree with one chop.

And with great skillful skill and with great speedy speed,

I took the soft tuft, and I knitted a Thneed! The instant I'd finished, I heard a ga-Zump!

I looked.

I saw something pop out of the stump

of the tree I'd chopped down. It was sort of a man.

Describe him?... That's hard. I don't know if I can.

He was shortish. And oldish.

And brownish. And mossy.

And he spoke with a voice

that was sharpish and bossy. "Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze,

"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.

I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

And I'm asking you, sir, at the top if my lungs"-

he was very upset as he shouted and puffed-

"What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?" "Look, Lorax," I said."There's no cause for alarm.

I chopped just one tree. I am doing no harm.

I'm being quite useful. This thing is a Thneed.

A Thneed's a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!

It's a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove, It's a hat.

But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that.

You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets!

Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats!" The Lorax said,

"Sir! You are crazy with greed.

There is no one on earth

who would buy that fool Thneed!"

But the very next minute I proved he was wrong.

For, just at that minute, a chap came along,

and he thought the Thneed I had knitted was great.

He happily bought it for three ninety-eight I laughed at the Lorax, "You poor stupid guy!

You never can tell what some people will buy." "I repeat," cried the Lorax,

"I speak for the trees!" "I'm busy," I told him.

"Shut up, if you please." I rushed 'cross the room, and in no time at all,

built a radio-phone. I put in a quick call.

I called all my brothers and uncles and aunts

and I said, "Listen here! Here's a wonderful chance

for the whole Once-ler Family to get mighty rich!

Get over here fast! Take the road to North Nitch.

Turn left at Weehawken. Sharp right at South Stitch." And, in no time at all,

in the factory I built,

the whole Once-ler Family

was working full tilt.

We were all knitting Thneeds

just as busy as bees,

to the sound of the chopping

of Truffula Trees.

Then...

Oh! Baby! Oh!

How my business did grow!

Now, chopping one tree

at a time

was too slow. So I quickly invented my Super-Axe-Hacker

which whacked off four Truffula Trees at one smacker.

We were making Thneeds

four times as fast as before!

And that Lorax?...

He didn't show up any more. But the next week

he knocked

on my new office door. He snapped, "I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees

which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please.

But I'm also in charge of the Brown Bar-ba-loots

who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loot suits

and happily lived, eating Truffula Fruits. "NOW... thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground,

there's not enought Truffula Fruit to go 'round.

And my poor Bar-ba-loots are all getting the crummies

because they have gas, and no food, in their tummies! "They loved living here. But I can't let them stay.

They'll have to find food. And I hope that they may.

Good luck, boys," he cried. And he sent them away. I, the old Once-ler, felt sad

as I watched them all go.

BUT...

business is business!

And business must grow

regardless of crummies in tummies, you know.

I meant no harm. I most truly did not.

But I had to grow bigger.So bigger I got.

I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads.

I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads

of the Thneeds I shipped out. I was shipping them forth

to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North!

I went right on biggering... selling more Thneeds.

And I biggered my money, which everyone needs. Then again he came back! I was fixing some pipes

when that old-nuisance Lorax came back with more gripes. "I am the Lorax," he coughed and he whiffed.

He sneezed and he snuffled. He snarggled. He sniffed.

"Once-ler!" he cried with a cruffulous croak.

"Once-ler! You're making such smogulous smoke!

My poor Swomee-Swans... why, they can't sing a note!

No one can sing who has smog in his throat. "And so," said the Lorax,

"-please pardon my cough-

they cannot live here.

So I'm sending them off. "Where will they go?...

I don't hopefully know. They may have to fly for a month... or a year...

To escape from the smog you've smogged up around here.

"What's more," snapped the Lorax. (His dander was up.)

"Let me say a few words about Gluppity-Glupp.

Your machine chugs on, day and night without stop

making Gluppity-Glupp. Also Schloppity-Schlopp.

And what do you do with this leftover goo?...

I'll show you. You dirty old Once-ler man, you! "You're glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hummed!

No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed.

So I'm sending them off. Oh, their future is dreary.

They'll walk on their fins and get woefully weary

in search of some water that isn't so smeary." And then I got mad.

I got terribly mad.

I yelled at the Lorax, "Now listen here, Dad!

All you do is yap-yap and say, 'Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad!'

Well, I have my rights, sir, and I'm telling you

I intend to go on doing just what I do!

And, for your information, you Lorax, I'm figgering On biggering and BIGGERING andBIGGERING and BIGGERING, turning MORE Truffula Trees into Thneeds

which everyone, EVERYONE, EVERYONE needs!" And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack!

From outside in the fields came a sickening smack

of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.

The very last Truffula Tree of them all!

No more trees. No more Thneeds. No more work to be done.

So, in no time, my uncles and aunts, every one,

all waved me good-bye. They jumped into my cars

and drove away under the smoke-smuggered stars. Now all that was left 'neath the bad smelling-sky

was my big empty factory...

the Lorax...

and I. The Lorax said nothing. Just gave me a glance...

just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance...

as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants.

And I'll never forget the grim look on his face

when he heisted himself and took leave of this place,

through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace. And all that the Lorax left here in this mess

was a small pile of rocks, with one word...

"UNLESS."

Whatever that meant, well, I just couldn't guess. That was long, long ago.

But each day since that day

I've sat here and worried

and worried away.

Through the years, while my buildings

have fallen apart,

I've worried about it

with all of my heart. "But now," says the Once-ler,

"Now that you're here,

the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.

UNLESS someone like you

cares a whole awful lot,

nothing is going to get better.

It's not. "SO...

Catch!" calls the Once-ler.

He lets something fall.

"It's a Truffula Seed.

It's the last one of all!

You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds.

And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.

Plant a new Truffula.Treat it with care.

Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.

Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.

Then the Lorax

and all of his friends

may come back."~Dr. Seuss So I traveled further south, to complete an opened water scuba diving course. The scuba course was great. I saw blue and yellow cichlids; one call an Aurora Yellow. I saw a huge catfish and an old VW jeep. It was way off shore; am not sure how it got there?? I look forward to more diving; this time in Mozambique.

I went alone; being unwilling to continue sorting through their moods and my resulting moods and so on and so forth. We have all returned to Zambia. They enjoyed their time and I enjoyed mine. It just so happens that we had different agendas.

On Christmas afternoojn I rode Clover; a beautiful grey speckled Thoroughbred. We did some trotting, I finally got the rhythm at the end of the ride. We did more cantering and a little galloping. Then went swimming in the lake. It was a great ride. See photos.

So watching the presidential elections, in Africa, was great. His speech made me very proud to be American. Here in Zambia they are happy to see this is possible.

Hemingway says not to write about the people in your life. Abbey says that Frederic was relieved to bid farewell to arms, both times. I saw it differently. Abbey wrote personal history all the time. I am finding it difficult to write anything but creative non-fiction. But worry that when I finish...Perhaps I just need to finish. Obama's "Yes We Can" gave me a purpose I had lacked in the past.

The rains have come and with them orchids, termites, screaming blow frogs (with glue glands on their backs), fresh green against red earth, and swallows that swoop by the thousands.

Last week I followed a neighbor into the bush at about 4pm. We had all that was needed for our task: headlamp, 6 foot long grass bundles, a burlap sack, and the right timing. We were head for a very specific mound of dirt. This mound contained termites, termites that opened their nest just after the first rains to release their gametes; the gametes are carried by briefly winged large termites. This mound belonged to my neighbor. I would have thought you could just find any one of the thousands mounds I have passed in the last months. But all surrounding the village are claimed. So we walk into the hills, stopping atop some boulders to look back at our village. It looked so small and simple from on high. We still have a lot of trees, some places do not, and they were all releasing leaves of vary shades of green. The thatched roofs stood out faded gold and silver among this green. I remembered again were I am, I forget at times. I think this is a coping mechanism; Peace Corps likes to talk about coping...A LOT. Anyhow we walked among flowing fern-like plants and abandoned villages. We arrived about an hour before sunset. I found a huge maroonish-purple orchid next to the mound and went off in search of more. My neighbor's relative, whom would be catching termites next to us said with disgust, or maybe just confusion, "These people". I laughed and they laughed and I found more orchids and collected twiggs with the women. We bunched the twigs together, to be used as brooms later on. Soon it was dark and I found this strange toad like thing with my headlamp. It looked much like a toad, with no spring loaded hind legs though. The front and rear legs were the same, so it did not hop but walked like a lizzard, but with less grace. It looked awkward. I soon discovered you could not pick them up. Upon poking with a stick it doubled in size and it back became coated in a glue; a glue strong enough to adhese chicken beaks. Then when poked further it screamed in a very harsh manner. They were our company; there for the same purpose. I looked around us at the many small fires, our own adding it's light to the humid air topped by starts and filled with the chirp of crickets, the call of strange birds, the humm of frogs. I kept checking to see if the mound had opened yet. First came the milky white and miniature termites. They would appear before any holes. Then openings appeared with the presence of soldiers and workers. These termites were tan with brown heads. Then I began to see the winged ones. They were shy in the beginning. Not really sure how to navigate the openings with their newly acquired wings. We had our hole and our fire. The time had come. So we lit our grass bundles and they came. In the open they flew quickly, their were lots of them. They swarmed my head. I had screamed and tried not to and screamed some more. They were everywhere. In my shirt, in my hair. AHHHH. As they flew towards our fire their wings were burnt and they fell. To be swept quickly into the shallow hole and then loaded into the sack. I ate the first one after roasting it on the fire. Now if you had told me I would be eating termites before I came...Anyhow I ate many that nite. I must say now that the experience has passed eating the pounds that have been gifted to me will be more difficult; the novelty has worn off. But that night with the stars and the many fires and the humid air it just seemed right. On the way back I lead the way with my torch/headlamp. There were perhaps 10 people behind me. All with about 15 pounds of bugs in the sacs, on their heads. I saw a movement about 3 feet ahead of me and stopped. It was a snake. It had white scales with a black stripe along the top of it's back. I half-heatedly lobbied for it's life. Knowing that here you kill snakes, all snakes. They first used a sling-shot, then a stick, then a hatched. Even after all of this they were jumpy when nudging it with a stick. I asked afterwards what kind it was. In Nsenga it is called Ndala, I am not sure of the English name. I was told it was similar to a green mamba. Death by this snake would be painful, but quick. I guess killing it was the thing to do. I made it home around 10, ready for sleep as in the village I don't usually make it past 8. The next evening I watched at the sun set a Caribbean pink and the swallow sopped. If you focused on a single termite, tiny and black against the grey clouds, it would soon disappear; the swallows feasted, the people sang and performed mini dramas, the rains have arrived.

PS-I miss Oregon and Arizona and all that lays in between, in the past...I miss road trips and lattes. I miss TJ's and Thai food. I miss my own kind. I am happy though and I go to the beaches of Malawi for Christmas and maybe The Gambia.

Have been thinking a lot about my little sister, whom to this day I miss...Like some one who has lost a part of herself. I was in a car accident on Labor Day weekend, though I was in Namibia and the holiday was not celebrated. The car rolled a number of times. There was a single fatality and I have spent the month of September recovering; emotionally, as I only suffered a minor scratch and some bumps and bruises.

We were headed down a bright landscape, a landscape which seemed brighter than normal. Perhaps because I slept minimally the night before due to a broken down bus and a tow truck that ran out of gas. Anyhow as I dozed off and on I would notice the whitish brush pass by alongside the warthog warning signs. About 100 km after I boarded the Isuzu trooper-type 10 seater we began to swerve across both lanes of the the highway. We all ended up flying into a triple roll. I tucked into a ball as we went and prayed for all to be well. As soon as we had settled on our side, in the middle of the highway, there was a mad rush by all passengers to be out of the vehicle. I stumbled out to find one man immobile on the pavement beside the truck. His breathing was interrupted and he watched me silently. After wandering around for a confused while I came back to him and struggled to find some way to help him. I came up with none, as his injuries seemed to require more skills than I had. Soon I found myself in a truck headed to the hospital. The others were left behind to wait for the ambulance that was on its way. This man, the driver, I was told died on the way to the hospital. No one else was seriously injured, though there were many abrasions. The people I spoke to after the fact did not know what caused the driver to lose control, but in the end it's not important.

For me this incident served as a wake-up call. When I lost my little sister, to a roll over accident in 2001 on Labor Day weekend, a part of myself was lost as well. A part I took for granted as it had been there for all of my conscious life. She and I were extensions of the other and though we grew further apart as we grew older our closeness defied recognition. In the disoriented months after her loss I struggled to regain a sane grip on life. And in this process realized how utterly precious every moment truly is.

I suppose in the years since then I have healed and once again forgotten this vital lesson. But watching this man die on the highway has reminded me.

Now I look back on that time. The pain has lessened, or more precisely I am now able to manage it more effectively. Sitting here I recognize that life does go on. That loss is a part of change and change is unavoidable.

I regret her not being able to live the full and beautiful life she deserved...All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you. That was her one request and only now 7 years later am I able to replace the guilt of things I should have done differently with memories of our happiness as children.

Here's to life and not taking it for granite.

So I lay in a dune basin, surrounded by soft sand and cloudy sky. I came to Namibia to find a heaven I have found before. Though it was not as I expected, it reminds me of what makes me most happy in this world...Moments of presence like that talked about by Martin Buber, whom I studied in the religious studies class I took with Ken Morrison at ASU.

...Standing at the base of a 12,000 foot peak. Surrounded by high alpine rocks and trees. It is a place I know well for I have hiked to this spot every year of my life minus 2. I am 27 years old at this point. I have been waiting my whole life to feel what I am now feeling. Everything has gone soft and cartoon-like, it is perfect in a way that makes me want to sing. And singing I know that there is nothing more fitting that I could have offered. My throat is clogged with emotion, my heart pounds...

...Swimming and walking through a series of lakes at the base of The Sisters in Oregon. Once again I am present. It is a presence that Shel Silverstein looks for in his poem The Perfect High. I am surrounded once again by high alpine forest. The water is warm. I swim past a bald eagle, and disturb a school of tadpoles. Here the feeling is a mixture of excitement and peace.

...Hiking in the Rincon Mountains outside Tucson through grass taller than me; just after a heavy monsoon season in the desert. I have spent the last year working to rebuild a corps. Not sure I am doing it the right way; only later understanding...Anyhow the grass is hyper green as I watch the sunset. And I know that soon someone will be wearing that color and I will take note.

...Swimming in the Carribean Sea at sunrise, with mist rising off the warm water into a cooler air. Then braving the distance as I swim to the reef. Where I find myself flying over a world filled with color...

Being asked to stay, or at least to return, in a Eugene cafe. Asking "Ya?" and hearing truth in the reply. Feeling like anything was possible.

These are some of the pure moments of my life. And I can only hope there will be many more like them. Or that the moments in between, moments which remind me they have occurred, will be enough to keep me brave and hopeful.

The lady who re-wrote my resume proclaimed me a "highly motivated team leader". What do I do? How do I show the above world to those around me? How do I achieve the MORE that is required to redirect us?

Or perhaps I do not. I just experience it; while doing the best I can everywhere else.

At one time I though I could do it with fashion. At another with writing. Or working for the UN. Studying physics.

.

.

.

I have decided that I am not good at dating, socializing and the such. I like people, but don't understand the intricate games they often play. I do much better in places where the challenges are in the open; often times this means they are bigger.

Training is infinitely more difficult than the rugged village life; infinity being immeasurable.

Am headed on a wide open route to Namibia. Am VERY ready for the freedom and beauty to be found.

So the wide open route is a little scary. Was not really expecting that part OF COURSE. Anyhow I got robbed, well more like ripped off in Livingston. I was buying Rand, b/c the bus company did not accept Kwatcha, and got confused with the conversion. Ended up loosing about 200,000 Kwatcha which is about $60 (US). Then a guy tried to pick-pocket me but I felt the movement and he did not succeed. Some guy also unzipped my bag in Windhoek. Anyhow I am enjoying myself just feeling a little bit green. But that is good, it reminds me that I still have many things to learn in this world.

This morning while looking for the bus station I happened to ask an older man for directions. He was European African, meaning of German decent but born and still living in Vindhoek. He was very pleased to show me the way and linked arms with me, probably b/c I looked a little lost. Then as he left he pinched my cheek and said to find him if the the train did not leave until evening; as he expected it would. He said "We'll have a caffee" in a European accent. He was unlike many Europeans, and like many Africans, I have met in that he smiled when greeted by a stranger.

Things here are different from Zambia. For example the exchange rate from US $ to Namib dollar is 7.5. Where in Zambia it is 3000. So needless to say banks don't buy Kwatcha here. And thus I spent a good amount of time hunting down the Zambian Embassy, after a stop at the American Embassy, to sell my Kwatcha. Being green I had withdrawn a fair amount is case my debit card did not work. It did and that is why I have money right now; as opposed to this am when I arrived in a big city with money that did not work. Anyhow I have set a time this afternoon to sell to a lady. To follow the higher currency Namibia has much more infrastructure than Zambia. The roads are great, the check points (for foot and mouth disease I think) are effective and the people are well fed and less friendly. By well fed I mean fat. For the first time in my life I truly understand that there is a direct correlation between fatness and prosperity.

My favorite part about Namibia so far is the sign I saw on the bus. It was a big white sign with a red exclamation point inside a black triangle that said ELEPHANTS. And I saw Victoria Falls before coming, which also made me excessively happy. I am really looking forward to the Coast. I arrive tomorrow am after an overnight bus ride. Where I intend to guard my bag against train robbers.

Traveling alone is interesting. I discovered I like it b/c I don't have to feel bad about all of the above when there is no one else around; I just have to push through the challenges and believe that good things are around the corner. Does not really make too much sense, the being alone part, as I write it out but I know it's true.

To bring this all back to dating/socializing. I do better here among all the challenges than I did at training?#@=+.....Where the only challenge was trying to understand what I was feeling and not understanding what others were.

First you take the groundnuts and you grow um...You grow um. This process in entirety taking about 6 months. With field prep for the motivated starting as early as July. For most field prep is completed just before the rains come; in late November or early December. Once the rains start, truly start not just a couple little showers, you plant your seeds. Some have saved seeds from the last season, this being the more economical option, others buy seeds either from fellow villagers or from seed companies in the BOMA. Anyhow you plant them and then let the deluge of rain, which last for the next 4 months, water for you. Around the end of April you pull your seeds from the ground and let them dry in shell, on root at your field. After a couple weeks you remove to roots and transport shelled groundnuts back to your house; either by bicycle or on your head. At home you shell them by hand; for me this can be painful for as of now my hands lack toughness.

Then you smash them...You smash them. Before smashing you roast them, then break them in half. Removing skins and that little node which joins the two halves of a peanut. Then you begin to pound them by hand. You continue for a good long while, having sifted out the finer particles and then having readded them at that certain point when a paste begins to appear.

Then you eat with a spoon and come local honey.

I of course did not grow the peanuts this time round, but by next year I will have. It is funny I have eaten a LOT of PB in my life, never having given the inputs much of a thought. Villagers love Chiponde (PB). It is a very special treat for the kids and adults a like. For me it has been a consistent protein source; which at times I grew sick of, after having eaten an average of 2-4 PB and Js a day. Well now I know.

But of course this is just one of the many examples of the difference in food availability here. And it also a big part of my job as a LIFE volunteer. Other parts of my job as a LIFER include: beehives (both looking into methods of construction which cut down on tree murder and starting hives as means of income generation), poultry establishment (specifically as an income generating activity for a women's group who would like to support orphans in the community), and Agroforestry Library (with publications available in English as well as Nyanja), Conservation Farming (the term conservation referring not only to the environment, but also to a farmers labor inputs as well), and math tutor.

Life is good. Have posted more pictures.

So I watched the God's Must Be Crazy at the school near my village. Yes I have no running water, no electricity and no vehicles around me...But one of the teachers has a TV??? I laughed so hard at one of the scenes that I cried. Have not laughed that way in a while (since last I was with Ky). Anyhow it was good. The movie is truly brilliant, though I watched a copy of a copy of a copy and the picture was actually somewhat blurry. It gave me a good reference frame for where Africa came from, where it is now and where it is going...

Our President Mwanawasa has passed away. He was in Paris in intensive care after a malarial stroke. We have been advised to stay alert and avoid political discussions. A bit unsettling.

Thieves broke through my window the other nite, but I woke up and scared them off before they could enter the hut and scare me off. Was a bit unsettling.

Am reading a biography on Einstein, God's Equation, which is a great and simple overview of his Theory of General Relativity. Makes me consider goe/astrophysics as a graduate degree. Would have to do some serious brush up on my math and physics skills. Have written a snail letter to my father, with many questions about the details. Which he understands better than anyone I know. Keep an eye out Dad, I think we should try to observe the next total solar eclipse and look more seriously into the earth's magnetic field. When is the next one to occur? Where would be the best point to observe and the most logical; considering where we live now and when it is to occur? Anyhow the book has really knocked my socks off...Absolutely unsettling; in the best way of course.

Well I guess the deities must be a little bit whacked...And that explains human nature.

I have been elected to the Volunteer Advisory Committee. Which is a group of volunteers and PCV Leaders which addresses concerns presented by the entire PCV/Zambia population. Many of the concerns bring memories of my previous corps work. They make me think of the challenges faced by administration and corp participants. Challenges that arise when people remove themselves from comforts zones. Even now I chop at the bit, wishing there were an easier way to accomplish the great things. But I really enjoy returning to the participant standpoint. It gives me a more complete understanding of the job I did as Program Director.

At our provincial meeting I gave a little speech about being positive and remembering why we all came to Zambia as Peace Corps Volunteers. I have heard reverberations of those words in the days since and am happy to have been able to contribute. Though at times I fear I am better at giving advise than following it. Arggggg!

Let you mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before, let your soul take you where you long to be…Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you will live as you have never lived before.

I found this quote, during my first week at site, on a letter given to me by Peace Corps Staff. It rang for me. Just as life rang while I walked back from a football game. As darkness settled in an almost full moon rose, a little girl (one of my favorites in the village) rides no the back of my bike as I push it towards home, I sing to the children as villagers move in mass around us.

The first week at site was spent cleaning, meeting people, “scouting” on my bike (this by far being the best part), understanding a difference in the meaning of time, dancing with the women, ect.

Riding my bike through elephant grass twice my height, in a landscape which holds you captive…There is always something new to discover. A termite mound, a little stream which reminds of home, a big open view that spreads before you, villages placed oh so remotely…

The simplicity of this village life is full of meaningful activity. Time has definitely slowed for me, though not in that reciprocal to “time flies when you are having fun”. Rather in a way where hustle just is not necessary, for there are many things to do, but if you take your time and enjoy the moment everything is completed by the end of the day, and you feel accomplished, tired and happy.

I have started a garden. The first part was to clear the grass, for it was very tall and very thick. I then started turning the soil and planting. I have replanted a mint and aloe plant, which I picked up at training. I have also planted tomatoes, sugar cane, Echinacea, red sun hemp, and Marigolds…I plant to bring in bananas, eggplant, cabbage, squash. The soil is very dark and moist. Though as things dry up I have been told it will become hard due to a lot of clay, and when the rains come it may flood. So what appears to be an Eden may soon become an earthly lot of hard work. Though I do look forward to eating homegrown veggies!

The women have been teaching me to dance; in a closed dark room so as to keep the secrets hidden. Though the secrecy is a front for most men and young girls, those who are to be kept in the dark or out of it, know. Their hips flutter like birds and I have finally accepted that I just can’t shake it like they can, though I practice. Some women asked for a women’s group meeting…Women are always women…There are rivalries, laziness, exclusivity and a want for immediate satisfaction that stands in the way…It will happen when it happens.

I have read a couple books: Smoke Jumper (which was perfectly timed and revealed to me that my broken heart may never heal), Comstock Lode (entertaining), and 5 People You Meet in Heaven (still working on this one). These are much faster reads than People’s History, and less depressing. While visiting my BOMA (British Occupancy Management Area) I watched The Band's Last Waltz. In doing felt a homesickness that was refreshing. Not that I was ready to return yet, but that I began to see the forest for the trees. I also watched some BBC news and realized just how important America's spending is to the world???????? As part of the world's financial review the reporter talked of how American's are avoiding big ticket items like automobiles and tending towards discount stores like Walmart. And though Walmart's was experiencing a rise in profits they were not anticipating meeting yearly targets. With consumerism as a way of life, is the pursuit of happiness in vain?

I have realized also that my desires to run to the wilderness, like Christopher McCandless or my father, represented a longing for silence and calmness. I have found this in the village, though there are disturbances they are manageable and not overly distracting.The biggest stressors are: sickness (both humans and animals), witnessing deforestation, and dealing with a neediness felt by those that surround me.

Was told the other day by a Zambian man that if a women is not married by the age of 20 there is not hope for her. Why does this bother me?

Just finished the Swear In ceremony. Was a quick and joyful occasion. Am excited to get to my site. Look forward to some serious nesting and learning of local environmental language.

Am feeling a bit scattered; due in a large part to 4 months of continuous movement/traveling. Will soon be settled, the thought is reassuring.

Have seen 2 PCVs ring the bell (or really the old tire rim) which signifies the close of their service. These mini speeches that people give at the end of really intense service always make me tingle with the good sauce. They represent the best of humanity and remind of corps gone by; in my life I mean.

For me now close of service seems far off, but I am sure the time will fly by as it drags on. Perhaps that is the beauty of challenge it removes the mundality of life. By doing so causes what seems to be a time warp.

Hoping that all is well at home. Will soon be able to send along good options for visits....

Am reading People's History of the United States (Howard Zinn). A perfect book to read while spending an extended period outside The States. One of my goals in joining PC was to gain a better understanding of the US and what it means to be an American (this goal was not understood until I started my training). I guess while in the states is was hard to see the "forest for the trees". Anyhow reading People's History is helping, though I have only made it to the Declaration of Independence and now the signing of the Constitution. Africa is a good place to be. Am hoping to gain a better understanding of humanity; I believe living in a tribal environment will help me achieve this one. Is development the answer? Peace Corps emphasizes "sustainable development" which gives me hope. Population growth seems to be the root of many "problems" which we as PCVs will attempt to solve...Problems range from: food insecurity, deforestation, inadequate health care, and so on and so forth. Will a Western/Developed World approach eliminate these concerns? If it could all be redone...Does a perfect mold exist? No no and no again, but perhaps a restructuring of our priorities???

Well I have made it to 29. This has already been and will continue to be a great day in the history of my life. I said goodbye to my host family, for a couple of weeks at least, this am. They all told me how they would miss me. My grandmother has recovered from a bad tooth which had stopped her laughter for no more than a day...She is laughing again, thank goodness. A week ago we laughed together as she introduced me to "African Brandy". Which after drinking she pulled her arms together in front of her and growled "POWER". It was GREAT. I decided that first bit was enough for me, and will remember it for many years to come. "Your Beautiful" is playing in the background, it reminds me of Tucson and home.

The same day Grandma introduced me to POWER I had another interesting introduction. Termites in my walls, which continued to pour out of holes they had made all day. This was only mildly disturbing as they were easy to clean up and kind of interesting to watch. However at around 17 I walked back to my hut with my Amai who was going to use black oil and parafin to take care of the problem. Within 2 minutes of our work there was a commotion outside and I looked to see an ARMY of leaf eater ants headed straight at my house. I screamed...These ants are not like ants in the state. They, like most of our bees, are "Africanized". Meaning they are hyper aggressive, will kill large animals and hiss loudly. I was envisioning them taking over my house, but my Amai altered their path with a bit of parafin and they began to feast on the termites from the outer wall. They took care of them in about 15 minutes, and were GONE as quickly as they had come. Anyhow a natural form of pesticide and I did not call PC for fumigation. Yeah!

So there will be a breee (BBQ) this afternoon. Purely coincidence, but very good for my soul. We will have soccer and ultimate games and a dance party to top everything off. Could not have asked for more. There are 2 others who share my birthday, a guy and a gal (who is turning 30 which is nice for me, as we can laugh about it together).

Tomorrow I leave for 2nd site visit. At which point I will finally visit Eastern Province and will be also seeing my site which is outside the BOMA of Petaoke in Koloko Village.

Ambuya anga (My (host) Grandmother in C'Nyanja) is dancing under the moon with a crazy muzungu and her grandchildren...They sing their songs, I sing mine...We all laugh and our hips moving to the rhythm of the tune we create. If this is not integration I don't know what is.

I tried to sing them Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" and then realized I would have to memorize the song (from my ipod) before trying again.

The land here is breathtaking. With the sky as my favorite part. It seems both closer and bigger...For some reason my mind is pleased by what seems to be a contradiction. The chameleons are great and the caterpillars bigger and more colourful. It is the middle of the rainy season, raining right now, so everything is green and the red earth of dirt roads make a beautiful contrast below the white and blue sky.

My training mates are very dedicated.

Gender issues here are always present. The children are very happy or very shy when you great them in a local language. They all yell from the roadside, as I we ride our bikes to class, "How are you?" and when you reply they ask again. The women smile with friendship and surprise the majority of the time. I do not greet them men, for the most part...Due in a large part to stories I hear of marriage proposals and beatings (in that order) and other more terrifying things.

I have sold vegetables in the market with my host aunt Kathryn. All her counterparts expect me to greet them individually, there are >30. She says I make them happy, mostly because I demonstrate my knowledge of the prices they provided to customers.

My host "Mother" Exhilda, who is younger than me at 26, said she would cry when I left just before the dance party outside my hut with Ambuya Anga...

Sunrises and sets are peaceful like the Oregon Coast, Quintana Roo and Arizona.

At times I question my decision, but this is natural and my commitment remains in tact.

My ipod reminds me of home...I thought I would come here and reflect on American life. I do not think of it much , beyond missing everyone and wishing they were here to dance, sing, use pit latrines, avoid malarial mosquitoes and smile with me. I shower here more than at home, per polite requests from Exhilda. Do miss my comfy bed and look forward to some quality down time once I am settled in my own hut.

HIV/AIDS training is about to start so I sign off.

Am in Kenmore/Tonawanda, NY outside Buffalo. Have been here for 4 days visiting family.

Tomorrow I leave for Washing-ton at 6 am. Staging/Peace Corps orientation will last for 3 days. I then arrive in Lusaka, Zambia on Saturday.

I feel excited and calm all at once. I think I enjoy this feeling...would like to thank maturity for this one. I have 20 pounds too much stuff. Can solve the problem by taking a carry-on, but would have liked to check everything, oh well. I have solar panels, rechargable batteries, a bike seat, bike tire liners, tin foil and oven bags, a big hat for that Southern Sun and all the normal stuff.

Said goodbye to the loved ones... Watched Once this afternoon, a wonderful film which brought out the creativity and a desire to listen to more great music.

My mother told me today that she sees me doing very well and building something...Hopefully I can fulfill her prophecy.

Love to all,

Aurora

Arrived: Dec 28, 2007 - Spent the next week touring Oaxaca, Oaxaca.  Tours include: Monte Alban, Mitla, Teotitlan de los Valles, San Martin, Oaxacan New Years on the Zocalo, Santo Domingo (Church, Museum and Botanical Gardens), Cooking Class with Pilar...

Leave for San Cristobal de Las Casas: January 5, 2008 - Overnight bus puts in San Cris at 7 am Sunday.  Tour the city Sunday afternoon after breakfast at Paris Mexico and check in to Plaza Central.  Monday tour Canon del Sumidero.  Meet group of fellow travelers.  Leave for Tulum with Lado Tuesday mid-day.  Arrive in Tulum Wednesday afternoon.  

Tulum:  January 9 - 19, 2008:  First night at Mar Caribe in hammock under opened ramada.  Many mosquito bites and annoying hosts prompt move to Diamante K.  Spend next 7 nights in beach front cabana.  Around January 11 I learn that I can swim to coral reef and do so for the next 4 mornings.  Room with Sarah for the last 5 nights in Tulum.  Visit Sian Ka'an, cenotes, Tulum ruins.  Dancing and dinners at Mezanine the local Thia kitchen.  Sunrise swims every morning.  I discover tranquila, todo por siempre and a giant.

Puerto Angel: January 22 - 25, 2008:  Spend 3 nights in Pacific Town with Kayla and Bethany.  Minus various annoying itches the Buena Vista treated us well.  Went on a boat ride: quietly slipped from boat, as instructed, to swim with some dolphins.  They swim away after 5 loud splashes proceed my own.  Dive from 5 meters up, hold a blow fish, and see at couple sea eagles (when I asked what type of aguila they reply aguila del mar).

Final weekend with Sage and Mark: January 26 and 27, 2008:  Play lots of scrabble (Sage wins all 3 games), Sage gives me a great new haircut, go for an outstanding hike in the hills behind their house, eat good food while a group of traveling entertainers perform on the Zocalo below Casa de la Abuela.  Head to sleep with mixed feelings: excitement for Africa, sadness at leaving Mexico, anticipation of family time for the next couple of weeks.