Ngong Hills of Yesterday

The sky is brightening.

The Baobab Branch office was painted ‘Northern Sky Blue’ and that’s the colour of the sky out the window. I no longer have a view of banana trees, gliding ibis, and stone walls stacked with broken glass. Now I have this blue Northern sky, framed by budding maple and crab apple trees. After being in a place of raw expression, emotion, events and landscape for so long, it feels quite surreal to be back in the soft quiet of Canada.

My last week in Nakuru had me learning how to install solar panels under Kai’s lead, at Morokoshi Nursery School. Camping out in Steve’s farmhouse under kerosene lamp and twinkling stars was a great way to slow down and just breathe for a moment or two before my segue home. I managed to get all of my final errands, meetings, coffee cups and chapatis, and goodbye’s accomplished in my last moments. I boarded the plane in Nairobi feeling like I’d achieved what I’d set out to do. I tied all the trip’s strings together, just as Amos and I ran through some final business details on our early 5:00 taxi route to the airport.

Can I summarize my entire trip? Draft some succinct culminating sentences to put it all together? The trip was just a lot of days, a lot of experiences, a lot of challenges, a lot of good times. In my head, it’s not working itself to those summative statements I was expecting I’d have. Maybe in years to come I’ll be able to do that. Perhaps it’s all still too current. I still hold the inkling that outiside the front door are those banana trees and bicycle taxis and noisy children and cows and charcoal venders.

I had assumed this blog would be an easy one to write. Everyone who has experienced Africa seems to always have so much to say. Dinensen, Kipling, Hemmingway, Paton, Achebe, Dahl, Conrad, Livingstone, Ng’weno, Geldof, Stanley, Equiano. And I agree a trip to Africa should dissolve writer’s block generally, but I’m left looking back, maybe without the foggiest idea of what just happened. Boom, you’re in Kenya. Boom, a million things to do and process. Boom, you’re back. Maybe it was because I could write in the moment, all those other blogs, that they came out so easily.

But where this trip maybe hasn’t yet given me life’s answers, or clarity, or a certificate; it has given me the desire for continuing - continuing a life of travel, exploration, trying new things, collaboration, learning, living. ‘Msafiri’.

A few months ago, I came across Ulysses, stored on my computer. I copied it to my journal, and ended up reading it to Amos a couple times. Even though my life is hardly Greek epic, I thought I’d end off with a few lines that say more than my own pen is producing. The thought of loving each day and continuing forward, is one thing this trip has shown me, I can’t really afford to not have in life.

Finallly, thanks to everyone - from my homes in Canada and Kenya who helped me through all and everything. Each of you has become part of my story, and I know I couldn’t have done anything without all of you. Special thanks to Amos, Ruth, Allan, and Steve who held my hand through it all and made the trip such an incredible thing. I look forward to when we can be together again.

Signing off,

Cameron

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone;

For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,– cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor’d of them all,–

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life!

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
To those of you who have yet to experience the sub-Sahara, I suggest you purchase a ticket soon. Camesh.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015211&l=f26d0&id=180500406 (a visual summary)