Almost Home

First, my excuse for the communication gap. I've had a long stint in the village during which, coincidentally, the email network I can normally access by cellphone decided to fluctuate between intermittent and non-existent! I am now in Arusha for the last time this trip and am making final preparations to leave Africa (via Kenya) on Monday.

Packing up my room has been harder than ever this time. It's amazing to realize that I've already put in a total of 6 months in Longido this year, and really strange to try and imagine not waking up in Africa next week.

So much has happened in the past few weeks. First of all, I have a new name. My Maasai friends had a great discussion about what to call me, one night at dinner (sitting around the outdoor cooking fire at Mama Farrajah's, warming our toes while we ate). I am now Noorkiramat which loosely translates to "the one who cares" (though someone last week told me it means "the one who belongs to the pastoralists" so who can be sure??) Either way, I accept it with pride, and love the responses that are evoked when I'm introduced to a new Maasai person that way.

Work-wise I ended up having to put in a lot more time than planned, setting up a simple manual accounting system for LOOCIP. And then, there were two days of facilitating a training seminar for the groups who wanted to learn about record keeping and writing up simple business plans for themselves. As usual, there are a pile of not-quite-done projects to carry home in my bags and try to finish off back at my own computer.

Plans are moving forward for the establishment of an emergency shelter/counselling centre for pregnant unmarried Maasai girls and I'm hoping we'll see at least a first phase up and running by November.

Having had all of my money stolen from my friend's house in Arusha mid-May has added a whole new element to this last month. My neighbors understand that I've had to be pretty tight with the replacement funds I've managed to get from home, and as a result have pretty much adopted me with respect to sharing meals and such, so as to not jeopardize the availability of money for various projects I've been supporting. As a result, I've been eating a much broader variety of truly local food, and been growing ever-closer to my neighbors. So much goes on in the process of preparing and sharing food as a family.

There have been some pretty wild moments too...some I'm still trying to process sufficiently to be able to describe them (keep an eye on post-return postings for more photos and some stories that haven't yet been told).

I'm trying to prepare myself for arriving to the heat of an Ottawa summer. Here, the past few weeks have brought progressively cooler temperatures, such that even in Longido I've needed a couple of blankets each night, and mornings definitely require lots of a layers and a sweater. Here in Arusha it's even cooler and part of me is wishing I had some proper socks and shoes (friends will know that's a pretty extreme statement from the woman who refuses to wear socks in Canada, except between Halloween and Easter). I may have to find a tanning salon...otherwise people will crack up if I appear in shorts or, yikes, a bathing suit. I have a tanned face and my forearms and feet are nice and toasty brown (well, by MY standards anyhow). The rest of me is never exposed to the sun here, so let's just say I'm dealing with an extreme version of a 'trucker tan'.

Must get back to packing, and then catch my ride out to the village.

Noorkiramat