the fit

When you go on a long trip, people say, "have fun, take lots of pictures."
I'm a pretty good traveler but a terrible picture taker. I didn't even take a camera this last time, just a phone with an okay camera. I did make some cool videos though, and some recordings.
So, we'll see.

afrika ya mashariki 2011

The more I travel, the less I feel like I belong anywhere. When I'm home, I'm thinking about there, and when I'm there, I'm so clearly an outsider, not at home, a mzungu, a faranji. Do I need to fit in? Or do I just need to be content when I've found my people, whether that's in Seattle or Dar es Salaam?
*
Anyway, here are the pictures I did manage to take, seventy-six seconds out of three million or so.

selam ana fiqir

Five weeks away, and I'm still not sure where my heart (home) is.
These things take sorting out.
In the meantime check out an Addis Ababa cloudburst: brief, torrential, noisy, punishing, cleansing, chaotic, demanding. In its wake, fresh air and an early afternoon.
Peace and love, say the rastas. Selam ana fiqir.

a day

A day in Dar es Salaam last week went wrong and stayed wrong.
In the end, I was happy to survive it.

• A boy crossing the street in front of our bajaj was hit by a motorcycle. The boy's kettle went flying, cinders scattering, and he was knocked to the ground, but got up moments later, shaken but okay. The motorcyclist and passenger slowed briefly, then roared away.
• Later I saw a lorry overturned in the street, remains still smoking, people standing around staring and disoriented.
• A friends' flight was delayed 11 hours, which meant the unraveling of a complicated network of hotel, bus and dinner reservations, flurries of texts, phone calls, internet searches and consultations with frazzled clerks.
  
• A man at the bus station was alternately insulting, nefarious, and thieving; after an hour or so of abuse, one of his co-workers waved us out to the parking lot, consulted with an unknown source, and called a big-wig who solved our problems and promised to sack the thieving boss.
• And with that, it was gin o'clock.
  

sawa sawa sawa

On a day that saw 40 degrees C (about 104F) and a bus ride across Tanzania, here's today's soundtrack, Nwa Baby:



We heard this catchy joint at Lady JD's Nyumbani Lounge (more on that later), and last night danced to it on the sand and under the stars at Mbalamweze.

bye now

Killing a few hours at the Dulles airport before my flight to Addis Ababa.
An absent gate agent's phone keeps ringing, Beyonce's tinny voice trilling "All the Single Ladies."
There's wifi, which is nice.
Beyonce again.
I slept fitfully on the red-eye from Seattle. Somebody kept passing ferocious gas.
But, I'm pretty wide awake. I'm thinking the Capitol Grounds decaf probably wasn't.
*
Today is the birthday of my oldest niece. Boy, is she old!
This is a mysterious kid, tres fashionable, thrifty, a little hard to read.
All qualities that should come in handy.
Happy birthday Bkres.

whatif

I'm holding onto some stuff and thinking about it is making me sad.
I feel like I need to let go.
I feel sad about that too. And scared. It's scary to turn loose.
Because, whatif???
Then I think, I've survived some stuff--an AWOL father, losing my mom and grampa, brushes with scary strangers--and I've done stuff, too, I mean dude, I've traveled the world, I've gotten lost in Kowloon, slept in a train station in Paris, jumped off a bridge in Zambia, I've started over and gotten told no and somehow I'm still okay.
So, letting go--yeah I can do it. I can.
I don't wanna.
But I think I have to.
$
In happier news, I had another story accepted, to this fine establishment.
Tonight's soundtrack--Thee Satisfaction and OC Notes' "Icing", all of them super coolcats.

word

Something big happened this week, something that's the culmination of a year's worth of writing, recording, pizza, beer, ganja, laughs and out-takes and edits and arguments, computer failures and couch-surfing and many many minutes of staring into the digital abyss.
It was a big occasion and yet it's mostly the turn of a corner, so it felt less big than it might have. At an almost final moment, it hit me. We're here. I hugged my pal and said I love you! So not me. This something changed me fundamentally. I learned. I fumed. I rolled and swooped.
Anyway here's a taste.
More to come.