A Land Without Thunder

10/25/05

I woke up at 7am and went jogging, up the same footpaths as before, just because I know them, know they are safe, and I wanted to see if I could push myself a little farther. When I got up to the big path, were I usually turn around, I decided to push on a little farther, I was tired, but I decided to push on. Another five minutes or so up that path, it connected with the main dirt road. Just before it connected, I passed by three young kids, one looked to be school aged, the other two were toddlers, all three were eating sugar cane for breakfast while they watched their Mom work in a shamba. I looped around the main path, passing by kids in school uniforms, men riding their bicycles and listening to their radios, women carrying their colorful hand-woven baskets on their heads. I saw Daniel; I stopped to say hi ("So, Mathieus, you are walking!") He invited me to his cousin's retirement party next week, which will probably be a strange and wonderfully awkward experience (I can hardly wait.) I came back down the dirt road until I recognized another footpath that cuts behind three acres of sugar cane and one of maize, next to that guy Richard's house, and dumps out onto the tarmac road just next to Mama Liz's. I took it.

Brian called. LA appears to be the same. I was counting on that, but now I feel vaguely disappointed. I don't even really know why or about what.

Sitting in my simba, trapped by the rain. It's coming earlier in the day, lasting longer, though I'm told we are nearing the end of the short rains. Long rains come in March. The thunder and the lightening and I think about the mythical importance that was placed on them and it's so easy to see why. I was reading a short story by a Luo lady, Grace Ogot, one of her characters is sitting by the death bed of her child, listening to the thunder, saying she knows it has come to take away the soul.

I'm still trying to get caught up with everything, typing up the vacation journal and unpacking. I start back in on the documentary in earnest tomorrow, we have two homes to visit, and then Thurs we are going to Migori to talk with Robert's sister, who just tested positive. And we keep pushing on the Life Skills Workshop, its amazing how difficult it is to get local craftsmen to agree to take apprentices, to find empty plots of land for a shamba for the kids, to find more chickens for the poultry farm, to find available sugar cane… But we refused to be discouraged. We just keep on going.

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