Ethiopia, July 2005
The Ethiopian monetary unit is the ‘birr’, and as you can imagine, we had a lot of fun with that. “You want some birr, I’ve got some birr, plenty of birr to go around.”
I’ve been going through all of things that I’ve saved from past trips and scanning them. I plan on putting together printed books from each trip with stories and photos and artifacts, like these.
On January 1st I started a photo-a-day project. Day 3 was a photo and blog post about my new favorite show, Doctor Who, on the same day that they announced the new actor for the next series. I’m still pretty sad about it.
January 2nd, 2009: “I’m feeling restless today. I’m not sure what to do with myself, my free time or this new adult-sized age I’m now inhabiting.”
January was when I decided that photography made sense. I wrote a lot about school with Hannah. Together, we watched the inaguaration of President Obama.
I got a cold and discovered the joys of the Neti pot. January rolled into February: “Life is mellow, but good.”. February rolled into March and Lent began. I bought a new netbook, dove into Terry Pratchett’s novels, saw the much-anticipated Watchmen in theaters, and ended my 365 project on Day 72. Stephen and I saw Flogging Molly in concert (and we’re still reeling from how awesome it was). Battlestar Galactica ended its run. I had fun getting noticed at the grocery store.
March 29th, 2009: “In a little over a month, I will be in Arizona. In exactly three months, I will be flying to London. My dreadlocks are 10 months and 8 days old. I’ve uploaded almost 3,500 photos to flickr. I’ve rated over 1,500 movies on Netflix. I have 202 friends on Facebook and 16 followers on Twitter. I’ve worked at the hospital for five years. I’ve been an Orthodox Christian for almost three years. I’ve been a college graduate for less than one year.”
April brought with it warm weather, songbirds, and the surest sign of spring. We celebrated Pascha and Hannah turned 15. Dad and I saw the Doobie Brothers in concert (for free!). In May, we went to Phoenix together and rode a motorcycle to the Grand Canyon. Hannah finished her school year. I started preparing for our next big adventure.
In June, I shot my first engagement session and decided that, Yes, I really do want to do this. A lot of things were making me happy. On June 20th, Kayla got married. On June 29th, Stephen and I flew to London. We rode the Big Bus and the London Underground, and discovered that the true purpose of a hostel is to give you stories to tell for years to come.
On July 3rd, we flew from London to Nairobi and spent possibly the longest and most uncomfortable 13 hours of our lives in the Nairobi airport. On July 4th, we flew from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro and settled into our homebase. It didn’t take us long to fall completely in love with Tanzania. My volunteer placement was teaching the kids at the Juvenile Detention Center, while Stephen was placed at Uwawayaki.
The four weeks we spent in Moshi were challenging, heartbreaking, exhilerating, frustrating, wonderful and beautiful. I still look to the horizon and miss seeing Kilimanjaro. We will never be the same.
We stopped in London again on the way home, spent more time exploring Camden, saw Harry Potter in Soho and shared a drink with Marg. We came home on August 4th, and the rest of the month blurred into September. Hannah started school again. I celebrated an anniversary, of sorts. In October the leaves began to turn and I had another session, this time with a friend’s daughter.
October 17th, 2009: “Lose a hobby, gain a passion.”
I started a website and began writing a business plan. October and November were dedicated to following this new path, and soon, it was December. We got a fish. I took photos of the first snow. We had one very, very bad day (which redeemed itself in the end). Christmas was wonderful. I turned 25. And we bid kwa heri to 2009.
One amazing year.
When I finally got around to emptying my red-dirt stained backpack a few weeks ago I found two little stowaways that had been snuck into my bag, and carried home – all the way home – from Juvi…
There’s nothing quite like the chaos of a classroom of thirty kids all needing their pencils sharpened right now. And sharpeners never seemed to last very long in the classroom, either breaking or disappearing entirely, so most of the time they were all scrambling for the same two sharpeners. “Moja moja!” I’d tell them. One at a time. But it took me until the last week to realize that this could all be avoided by taking the pencils back the home base and sharpening them all that night.
Which is what I did every night that week, sharpening pencils until my hands were sore and blistered, but oh the relief of that first morning when everyone sat down quietly and waited for their pencils. It’s those little things in life that you learn to appreciate.
That last week I also went back to Juvi for a couple afternoons, along with my brother and a few of the other volunteers, just for a chance to play with the kids. A lot of the boys wanted to draw, others wanted to play Tic-Tac-Toe with my brother, and some of the kids were deriving the greatest joy from bouncing that little green plastic ball on the cement floor. The ball would bounce and roll erratically around the room with a handful of kids scrambling after it.
My favorite game to play with the kids, or rather, their favorite game to play with me, was Hangman. They tended to play English words and phrases, usually the same words that were plastered around the room labeling the “chalkboard” and the “window”. I liked to play a mixture of the English that they knew and the Swahili that I knew, though the hardest part was learning their own particular pronunciation of the alphabet.
“Ah” (A)
“Eh” (E)
“Hech” (H)
“Ello” (L)
“Arra” (R)
One time I had up on the board:___a kchizi kama ndizi. For those who have never taken Introductory Swahili, it’s a common phrase that translates to cool crazy like a banana. A lot of the volunteers liked to wear it on their t-shirts. But poor Clinton just wasn’t figuring it out. So I finally looked right at him and said, “Mambo, Clinton!”. Mambo is a greeting: How are things? And you respond by saying Poa. Cool. Clinton opened his mouth to reply just as he figured out what I was getting at, and a huge smile grew on his face. For the rest of the day, whenever I would say “Mambo!” to him, he’d just laugh.
Just a pencil and a ball…and I realize how much I miss it.
Not intentionally, of course. We’ve been pretty busy since we’ve been back – work, church, birthday parties, reunions. Everyone wants to know about the trip, so rest assured, there are still many more stories to come…
