professional daydreamer

There is plenty I could lazily describe about Mozambique, my work and life here: the little barefoot Tom Sawyers flying homemade kites carefully constructed from bits of plastic and whistling like rockets above our roofs. Soccer balls whooshing down like meteorites out of a Caribbean-blue sky, the spontaneous football match in the wide  fields by my house having deteriorated into a little boy carnival, a melee of shouts, somersaults (straight into the mass of kicking legs!), and flying clods of earth and grass. The musty but not repugnant smell of the path that skirts behind the crumbling hospital mortuary, feeling like a jungle hike through 1970s Vietnam. (I imagine.)

But, as I am only 6 months into this gig, I have plenty of time to focus on Moz. So today, I'll share some other things that make me feel happy:

Swaziland. Lovely beyond my imagining.

In the Katlehong township, Johannesburg's second largest, on a home care visit to an HIV-infected twelve year old boy.

"Life is not a journey to be taken alone."
At Emthonjeni, one of our partner projects, just outside Soweto.

Friends from home have been sending photos. 

Here is my friend Abigail, who exudes softness and grace, hunting mushrooms near Canada.

Her husband, Phil, demonstrating why I love him.

I spent most of our travels throughout India and Nepal - 7 years ago now - sharing a natty mattress with this little guy's mom, Sandy. That was pre-marriage for her, pre-kids, and post-haircut by an Indian man who may have used a weed-whacker. Every morning she'd wake up looking like a white girl Tina Turner and I'd harass her by singing, "What's love got to do, got to do with it?!" Then she's throw her hairbrush at me. Her son's name is Reuben.

Minnesota at dusk.