Shira and saying Kwaheri

planning the hash

wazungu in the mist...

freezing, but successful!

someone here is tasty...

try to remember that time in september

i have been a little down recently ~ but if you actually read my ululating, you know that i am a constant swing of craziness.

so, in lieu of a potential future trip to my other home, i decided to go back and try to save some of my plethora of musings from my 2007 trip to africa. at the time i was a myspace devotee. now that myspace has all but devolved, i've transported some of those thoughts over here. the shifting sands of the interwebs weren't able to hold everything. what will our future generations do? will they forget us entirely with no record to show for ourselves? ah well.

so for the babies i may never have, or at least for my niece...

June
July
the kili climb
August
September
October

musings while running

musings while running

i love when everything falls into place
only happens after i've given up the race
well i have eyes to see
i have life that's bursting forth inside of me.
so lets take the long way home
every moment i spend with you
lets make it slow, slow, slow
we'll count the moments as they go
~catherine maclellan

when you hear a song, is the message to you? or from you? is it meant for the moment and should you take heed? or is it just for the singer? or is it just chords?

when is my song no longer mine? i used to think when my songs and my play were performed for a crowd, they were still meant for me alone. but once everything is broken, do they now belong to a girl i've never met?

when the workers have all gone home, and it is just me and a 4 foot bird in fields of deep green coffee bushes, their little white flowers intoxicating, and the clouds clear, and the mountain is crisp and the vista suddenly extends forever and you can hardly breath for the beauty of it, is it for me alone? is it a smile? a blessing? a warning? or nothing at all? if i am not there to see it, if my heart does not skip a beat, is it meaningless?

if i am no longer yours, and your love is no longer mine, did i ever have it at all?

what is really mine? the few dollars-or shilingi- in my bank account? i suppose that belongs to the bank, unless i took them out and stuffed them under my pillow. but the pillow isn't mine either. it is my parents' or my landlord's... i once stole a thimble from a lost boy. that is mine. a faded painting with a faded promise. that is mine too.

my heart has many parts, the walls built thick with age. if i have given you part, when you no longer want it, do i get it back? or is it lost forever? does my heart grow bigger to make up for the partitions? or am i left with a little less for me each time? maybe those pieces still belong to others, not who they are now, but who they were then. the 6 year old, the 16 year old, the 21 year old... and yet just the right dart can somehow pierce the walls even now.

maybe it is better to save yourself for the mountain, the country, the perfect moment. at least they never change and you can always return and visit and even the coldest heart will beat.
 

Machame: KILIMANJARO

the kili climb is fast approaching. Machame route. July 11th- July 16th

READ my climb up kilimanjaro here

http://shangala-bangala.blogspot.com/

tanzania!

today i measured little mtoto (children)s heads, weighed them, and took their heights. we had to track them down at their schools first. just arriving at the school in both a car and with a mzungu (white person) is cause for uproar in the rural area we were at. how anyone finds anything out in the bannana forests is beyond me. there are no street names or signs and you can't see beyond more than a few feet anydirection. the roads are filled with deep crevices--really can't call the monstrosities "potholes"-- and are only wide enough for one car at a time. so when a car comes from the other direction you have to pull up on the side. thank goodness for the driver- hired specifically by Kiwakkuki (the AIDS community site) for driving.

after we found the little girl here at her school we drove through the forest with her to find her home to speak to her mother and measure one of her brothers. she held her little sister with pride, showed me her coo coos (chickens), laughed at my complete lack of swahili (and her lack of english), and held my hand back to the car.