an amazing day

i love Malia and her little point-and-shoot. her father, certainly the most famous man in the world, followed by the world press and his own photo core-- and she's got out her camera to document it all. that's what i would be doing too if i was her. you know the second she gets around to publishing her pictures, not just of her dad, but from the frontlines of the first family, it will be a huge best seller. someone should option that right now.

 can i be one of those girls in my next life?? during the balls, they had a sleepover at the whitehouse with their friends. how cool is that?

on another note, those crowds were frighteningly huge. i hope my cousins and aunt made it out and didn't freeze. so many awful things could have happened or gone wrong. as we sat at my office and watched it all, there was that little shiver of tension in the background-- what if? what if the unmentionable?

did the 2 million people's good will, joy, and fervor act as a barrier to protect not just the themselves, but our new hero and his family? keep him distanced far enough from evil intentions?

kili time

kili time

from sylvie emmanual's fabulous coffee farm when she had us over for tea:

september 11th and john leaves to go to canada today. isn't that strange. what am i still doing here? am i absconding from life or living it?  it is hard to say. life is different, that much is true.  and hopefully i am different too. i make grand promises to myself about how to live life, how to survive in america. only time will tell.

TSP Orphanage, Tanzania

if you had never played with blocks, would you know what a triangle is? would you know how to place them side by side rotate them to make a square, a parallelogram? or would the shape hang, a mystery?
yesterday i wouldn't have thought twice. but today, as i watched 9, 10, 11 yr olds puzzle over such "games" i felt a desperate need to... what?
one little boy, as he played each game- copying hand gesture patterns, matching shapes and colors, recalling a list, completing picture patterns- he would look over to me, the slightly exotic white girl in the rural sugar plantation's orphanage, and smile impishly, his eyes twinkling for praise. but then the second half of the test, 3 pages of questions- "do you play well with others? yes, no, sometimes?" ..."do you have friends?"... "do you sleep well?" "do you have bad dreams?"... "do you remember your parents?" ....
the ki swahili would wash over me, a gentle murmur, barely over a whisper. with no idea what question they were on, i watched child after child turn to stone. the eyes of my flirting imp grew vacant, his body a pliant statue, like time itself had grown so slow i couldn't perceive it. and when the first betraying tear welled on his dark lashes, finally spilling down his cheek, the spell remained unbroken.
when we had finished with him, he left without a backward glance. no more smiles or secrets for me. forgotten, as i should be.

i am not hardened for such work.