Transition
July 31, 2010 Iganga Town, Uganda Side saddle on a bike seemingly transported from 1955, legs neither straddling or to the right of the cushioned seat, my bike chariot wove its way through the crowded, sometimes paved, streets. The cool humid air chilled me through my skirt – through the thin gray sweater meant to […]
Despite being well versed, hell- down right prolific, in both the art and execution of farewells; they wear on me. Not simply the act of saying goodbye – but the brief intervals between the ends…the end of the job or travel that has occupied my time for a eight months or two years and the […]
June 17, 2010 Brussels – Chicago – Dallas The self-check in denied me twice. The attendant, polite and dare I say pleasant, ushered me to the front of the sprawling line and assured me it would be taken care of. She was wrong. As it turns out, someone at Peace Corps or SATO (the government […]
June 15, 2010 Napoli, Italy I woke up in the wee hours of the morning not feeling right. Sick is too harsh a phrase but not exactly wrong. And so I never ventured down to breakfast (the thing that, besides the great panaromic view of positano and the sprawling ocean, I love best about our […]
Transit is the most inconvenient time for me. Of all the things about living in flux that I’ve become accustomed to and take in stride, being in transit between places – the time and space between morocco to libiera and Liberia to Italy for instance – is maddening. Packing for different purposes, one eye in […]
What looks like the absence of a plan is actually my plan. Losing myself to the medina, the moment, the opportunity to be caught in the current of a place is entirely the point…entirely my point. I realize most people prefer a plan. A schedule. A map. People prefer an order in the chaos of […]
He meant it as a surprise. Casual conversation destroyed that hope hope but still the sentiment remained. A kindness. A token to take with me wherever I go. And so last night was the party long in planning. People gathered in plastic chairs around a stereo system and I wondered exactly how it would go. […]
It burned my finger, forcing me to drop it back into the bag to wait for it to cool. Impatient, I picked it up again, and when the heat became too much I put it between my teeth, blowing out to speed the cooling process. A few seconds later and the soft yellow-brown flesh succumbed […]
This morning it was a damp patch of dirt, the color only slightly darker than the surrounding cinnamon brown. Yesterday it had been a muddy puddle; all that remained of the vast and fairly deep puddle that had obstructed the rocky road that runs in front of Sierra Leone’s house. I’d watched the water suspiciously […]
Change gon’ come… Time is so relative, despite appearances to the contrary. Sixty seconds to 60 minutes to 24 hours…and days turn into months turn into years. Neat. Orderly. The same for everyone. Except it isn’t. For the last five months time has been this slow moving vehicle transporting me through my Liberian experience. And […]
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