I have made most of the rounds over the last few days. Terry, Bianca and Martin bade me farewell today, Irene this evening, Brock and crew on Friday night, my Mum/sisters and I are still connecting at every available opportunity and Jason will deliver me to the airport at some unholy hour tomorrow morning. My more distant (geographically speaking) family members and friends got their fill of me at my surprise graduation party a couple of weeks back and I keep trying to remind everyone that I am only going to be gone for a little while. Before you know it, my overactive, high-strung, happy self will be back in BC to play with you in time for summer.As the departure approaches, I try to imagine the new sensations that await me: the warm sun on my pale bare skin, tribal drums and foreign tongues, pungent coffees lingering in the air, dramatic colors on sun-kissed horizons... I try, as the keen observer might note, only to imagine the positive new stimuli as, in my current state of pre-separation anxiety, I have to repeat the words that I will undoubtedly repeat a thousand more times in the next few months; I am OK right now. Right now I'm OK.
For those interested my plan is as follows:
Feb 8- arrive in Nairobi by air at 8:30 pm. Hang out with Matt and Jess until they get sick of me. Dr. Pearson insisted that I do some, if not all, of the following things there with them:
Go see the cows
Watch for the bronze elephants
Eat Mughlai food- Anghiti or Haandi
Visit Nairobi National Park
Attend the Museum of Kenya
Check out Giraffe Manor
Then maybe around the 10th or 11th, I take the Scandinavian Bus Line for 9 hours from Nairobi to Kampala (Uganda). Here I will meet up with Chris and Chelsea, stay at the Backpacker's Hostel and Dr. Pearson HIGHLY recommends the "Adrift Jinja Rapid Running" down the Nile. I am only going to spend one or two nights in Kampala and then take the bus first thing in the morning for another 10-13 hours, depending on various conditions, to Kigali, Rwanda. From there Cathy or Teste (yup, thats his name, not a joke) will pick me up and take me to the super-awesome Ruhengeri volunteer house with running water and modern facilities and all of that. On the 15th my stationing starts with 5 days of culture and language training and then I am shipped over to the Rwaza Orphanage on the 21st for my volunteer term in the dark without running water. My flight is scheduled to return to Canada anytime between the day after I get there and May 28th. That's a wrap.
A little birdy told me that my lovely Daddy MAY be visiting me for a post-volunteering tour of Uganda/Kenya. Terry has recommended a pulchritudinous marriage of comfort and Africa that will certainly quench our thirst for the unusual and exciting. His Father-daughter trip includes a trip to Queen Elizabeth Park and the Kizunga Channel, a ride down the Nile at Murtchison Falls Park, a 3-day semi-roughing it Maasai Mara safari and, ny favorite part, a train ride between Nairobi and Mombasa (the infamous Lunatic Express) followed by a visit to the Lamu archipelago from Malindi. Wouldn't that be unbelievable!?
My heart flutters, my hands tremble and my passion carries me boldly forward... where many have gone before. And so, to those whom I failed to bid farewell and from which I received no "bon voyage", sorry I missed you. You are important to me too, but I'll be back before you've noticed my absence.
I hope.
I'm such a drama queen.
Oh God, panic attack.
I am OK right now. Right now I'm OK.
