9.17.08

...excerpt from my journal...

I just finished reading Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley”. The book nourished my desire to be out on the road again. It also had a part where Steinbeck visited where he had grown up and he talked about the incongruence of memory and reality. His writing told of a fear that I know I harbor. It’s hard to give that fear a name, but perhaps I could call it change; I mean the change that father time slowly brings. So subtle you can’t see it but when you look back it’s almost unrecognizable and you become a ghost in what you thought would be recognizable reality.

“My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance—and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right ‘you can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.’”

Sometimes it’s the slow change that is the most painful. A married couple who once shared such passion now go to sleep like two brothers on a hotel bed. A best friend who gradually becomes a stranger, and not because of any falling out but simply because time has slowly eroded the friendship into something unrecognizable. If Steinbeck and Wolfe are right, I fear my homecoming after two years in Africa. My idea of what home is brings me comfort while I’m away. But my idea of home is frozen in time, unchanging while the reality of home changes with each passing day. I’m being written out of its history. 

NEW BACKDATED POSTS ADDED: BILL BLINTON, AND FARMING....check 'em out!

Hello world! Alas it is I back from a internetless existence and I must say life without internet is hard (but possible). I still don't have regular access but I want to let you know that I'm trying hard to start getting posts up. I'll be back dating posts that I've pulled from my journal so you can have an idea of things that have been going on since my last post about the 4th of july. Also I promise I'm going to try harder to start getting pictures back up. SO....keep checking in and once in awhile you will find new entries INSHALLAH! (God willing)

9.4.08

excerpt from a letter

I spent the whole day in the office behind a desk preparing for a training that I’m doing at the end of the month. I loath working at a desk. To give you a little more background, Ramadan has started which means we are fasting. No food or drink at any point while the sun is in the sky. For the whole month. We are also in rainy season and its been pouring rain for days. My neighborhood of Patte d’oih is completely underwater. Luckily my house is on a hill in Patte d’oih, but the rest of my neighborhood is a swimming pool of yuck water. Cars are completely submerged and bus routes (that I use daily) have been altered. Needless to say transport is a mess. So, a whole day stir crazy behind a desk, hungry like no ones business and dreading figuring out transport home when it starts to POUR down rain yet again. I grab my stuff and run out of the office determined to get home before the streets flood. I’m soaked by the time I reach the corner to catch a bus. I make a mental note that my phone is in my pocket and I need to move it to my bag. After some elbow swinging, pushing, and yelling in wolof, I manage to get on. A nice old woman offers me the seat next to her and I smile and sit. How nice of her. I quickly learn she offered it to me because a river of water is rushing in from my window and I will make a great barrier so she can stay dry. Yep, how nice of her. The bus begins to drive leaving a mob of angry and unlucky people in the rain. They need to learn how to swing elbows. I look out the window and see the road already flooded in about a foot of water. The bus stops and the driver exchanges words with another driver outside his window. Up ahead the road is impassable. Up ahead is the road to my house. The bus turns around and informs us, the passengers, he has changed his plan and now he’s going the opposite direction to downtown. After tracing a few maps in my mind, I realize though it’s extremely out of the way, it is my only option. The “nice” old lady stands and gets off the bus while a river of water falls onto my lap from the window. Some other guy sits next to me and we begin our perilous journey downtown. Parts of the trip felt like I was at Disneyland riding on the jungle river cruise ride, only in a crappy old bus, not a boat, and our driver wasn’t cracking any cheesy jokes about the backside of a waterfall. Quite sometime later the driver decides he doesn’t want to keep going so he pulls over and makes us all get out. Tired, soaked, starving and still far from home, I begin walking only to realize I never heeded my own mental note to move my phone and also my pocket felt lighter. Upon reaching down, I discover my portable gone. The guy I sat next to stole my phone! AHH! Extremely frustrated I stomped through puddles to another bus stop and began waiting. I continued to mull over my stupidity for forgetting to put my cell in my bag and realized I just wanted to get home so I could break the fast and read my book. Since I obviously had no need to buy more credit for my cell phone, I quickly justified spending the extra money on a cab home. I got home, broke the fast with my family, and went to my room to escape into my book.