watoto - children

Learning new words & awaiting the arrival of my pocket dictionary. We will be starting Swahili lessons the first week we arrive which continues for a few weeks, but I'm trying to get a feel for pronunciations and simple words before I leave. I hope to become proficient enough to be able to speak to people, because that is where I feel so much of the experience will lie. Interactions, conversations, people-to-people!

My essentials:
. journals
. stationery
. cameras
. lots & lots of film
. photographs of people i love & will miss
. an open open open mind

I keep my loves close to my heart as I prepare to depart.

Preparing for departure: 31 hours of travel ahead of me, timetraveling 10 hours into the future, in just 10 days...and I am still UN-packing from my last trip, only to pack it all up again. This seems to have become a trend in my life. . . I am always moving.

Saying goodbye has never been easy for me (that is an understatement), but I'm learning that these "farewells" need not be so dramatic when connections goes beyond acquaintance or shallow friendship. The bonds I have with the people that mean the most to me are stronger than any metaphor could truly justify, or any image could vivify. It's indescribable really, an invisible vein, transparent and elusive that courses through my being. And isn't it funny how here I am still trying to come up with some sort of visual explanation for the unexplainable. . .

Who would have thought that the young person who hated change, who didn't want to graduate preschool for kindergarten, who refused to move her bed to a different space in her room, who obsessed in diaries about events of the past...who would have thought that girl would turn out to be me?


This first entry is awkward, for I have very little idea of what to expect in the months to come, or how to go about explaining what I am feeling right now.

Sometimes words just aren't enough.