Linga Longa

Hello! I'm in Gaborone, having dinner by myself and working at a bar/restaurant (Linga Longa) in Riverwalk mall... I am also running late to go see the Michael Jackson movie with a couple of my colleagues.

IT ALL SOUNDS SO NORMAL!

Except that I had to run around to at least 3 places trying to find someone whose advertised internet was actually working, who also had a 3-pronged round-hole plug so that I could plug in my computer.

And of the two people I'm going to see the movie with, one has been to only one movie before, when he was a child, and the other has NEVER BEEN TO THE MOVIES BEFORE. I hope "This is It" is a good initiation to the joys of cinema. She wanted to see "Inglourious Basterds," but I felt that it would be a bit too much for her first movie in the theatre, ever. Particularly considering she barely speaks any English. Although a Tarantino film would be a kind of ironic first film to watch, being as he's so obsessively cinema-referential...

And the reason that I'm working from a restaurant right now is that I couldn't send a bunch of critical work emails last night, from D'Kar, because the power went out (I waited for an hour in the dark office with my laptop running on its batteries, hoping it would come back on), then came back on in the morning (at 4:30 a.m., when I woke up and went back to the office to finish my work before leaving for Gabs) but the internet STILL wasn't working, even though the power was back... Capricious bits and bytes, how I love/hate you.

So I'm here. And I'm waiting for a 2MB email to send (quotations for financial consultants which I am forwarding to the ADF so that they can evaluate my second disbursement request), which is taking about half an hour. ARGH. I'm missing Michael Jackson! I'm missing K's first reactions to a giant movie screen!!

Ooh, it sent. Gotta go!

not a do-gooder

Two Huiku board meetings, several nights of drinking and reconnecting with friends, and three kittens later... I'm feeling really happy to be back, and back in the swing of things.

The villages seem so much more friendly and comprehensible now. The weather doesn't seem hot, even though it's almost 40 degrees (still, could be much worse). And the work, though frustrating, makes sense.


I was talking about work to a close friend last night, as we sat at Thakadu drinking beer and eating ostrich stew, among the grizzled old farmers and the small-town Ghanzi youth. My friend was saying he admires me for the work I do. I immediately started making as many excuses as I could for why the choices I've made are not actually admirable, and I just happened to stumble into it as the result of a bunch of coincidences and mostly-selfishly-motivated choices, and really I'm not "self-sacrificing," I'm just sort of stupid when it comes to money, and honestly anyone would do it except they'd probably be doing a better job, and I'm actually impatient and lazy and un-compassionate and mercenary and honestly, I just happen to be doing it because I got stuck, you know... At some point, I stopped myself, and wondered aloud, "why am I so unwilling to admit I'm doing a 'good' thing?"

It was actually painful for me to just type that. I'm not sure why. I have never considered myself a moral, do-gooder sort of person... Yet on the other hand, the thought of choosing a career which doesn't have some element of helpfulness seems strange to me. Become an I-banker? But why? What's the point? I suppose so that you can collect all that money and then go off and start a school for orphans in Nepal or something like that. Which I admit is tempting. Make the money, then spend it judiciously and at your own behest, rather than struggling though the complicated jungle of NGOs and donor funding? Sweet, sweet relief.

I had one or two conversations of this nature while I was visiting home - "I think you're doing some really good work." "Oh no, I'm not, I mean, the work itself is good, but I'm really not, believe me..." I don't work as hard as I could. I live an embarrassingly affluent lifestyle. I'm not planning on staying for too much longer (ideally a year). I don't know the local languages, I don't do as much for the community in my spare time as I could. I haven't started any fancy initiatives, I haven't even followed up on all the stuff I SAID I would do, and I spend too much time on the internet. If you want to bestow praise on people for "good works," I can point you towards a hundred - a thousand! hundreds of thousands! - worthier recipients. And then there's the question of whether development work really works at all, and if I'm just perpetuating a highly problematic system by being here at all.

Furthermore, while I'm here it's just a job. If I have to work on a Saturday, I get very irritated, rather than benevolently delighted at the chance to Do More Good. Everyone else around me is doing the same job, presumably the same Good Works, and it just doesn't seem like anything remarkable. And people all around the world, in different jobs and different situations, in different ways, are doing good all the time - whether or not they do something like working in a small village in Africa.

I think that my choice to do this job says, more than anything else, that I have been supported and loved beyond all reason by my parents. It is their support which has given me the freedom to make flaky decisions like this, which are not particularly sound in terms of economics or career advancement. I've always felt that this is true, and it leads me to see my decisions as those of someone who is perhaps too privileged, rather than someone who Does Good Works. I don't think I will ever believe in, or be comfortable with, the notion of myself as a do-gooder.

But I do hope I manage to do a little good, while I'm here.

New Kittens

Hello, and welcome to the marvellous world of new-born kittens!

Melissa the Cat delayed her birth till I returned from Canada - she was looking a bit preggers when I left, and I thought she would deliver before I got back to D'Kar - however, she held onto her babies and had them the day after I got back. Friday night, she settled herself in my closet, and Friday afternoon, with surprisingly little fuss, she gave birth to kitten number one:

As you can see, it's still wet from the womb... I didn't notice in time to see the birth itself, or the sac being licked away, but this is still the newest kitten I've ever had the good luck to witness. She waited an hour and a half and then had a second one, also orange. At this point she still looked fat - as though she had at least one or two left in her - but she didn't deliver her third kitten until almost 24 hours later. This alarmed me, because usually such a long delay between kittens means something has gone horribly wrong, but Melissa seemed cheerful and healthy the entire time, nursing her two kittens and purring non-stop, getting up to eat and drink occasionally. Sure enough, the following day she delivered a third kitten, seen below:

This one was black, and proved to be her last. Feeling very pleased with herself, Melissa settled down in my closet to nurse her tiny, squirming, helpless little babies. Newborn kittens - like most fresh-new-born creatures - are not actually that attractive. They can't move around, their eyes are sealed shut, their tails are wormy and their paws and faces seem raw, unpleasantly vulnerable and unfinished, naked in an uncomfortable sort of way. Still cute, but it's like a newborn human child - wrinkly and raw, they're much more attractive several months later.

They are small, though. Which is cute. Their paws look like little raspberries.

And their mother is very proud. She just lies in the closet purring continuously. It seems like she LOVES the sensation of having three little furry babies nursing and pushing their tiny, weak paws against her belly. Newborn kittens are completely blind and almost completely deaf; their ears are folded over and their eyes are sealed shut. They interact with the world through smell, with a keen recognition of their mother's and siblings' individual smells. When I pick one up their noses go into overtime as they pick up the unfamiliar human scent, and sometimes they hiss, tiny little kitten hisses that sound more like a quickly-exhaled breath than the ferocious TCCAHAAAH that Melissa uses to ward off her enemies.

Kittens at two days old.

This one is my favourite - not only is it most comfortable with being held, it reminds me most of Kimchi. Also, it was last-born and there's a lot of mythology associated with youngest/third-born children. Look at those tiny little whiskers, and little white toes!

This was the first-born, and it's the most uncomfortable with being picked up. I don't handle them very much, but I had to get some pictures of their development...

At a week old, they're already so much bigger!

Their happy home in my closet (see bottom left).

10 days old, and their eyes are beginning to open! They definitely react now when you take them out into the light, and their sweet blue eyes are peeking out between half-sealed eyelids. Look how tiny this one is compared to it's mother's foot! Their ears are also starting to unfold.


Eyes open, with a nasty little bit of birthing blood on the bottom of my closet... Gross, I know. Sorry.



So, I know that there are at least a few of you that are thinking, "this isn't cute at all! This is a gross disregard for animal welfare and I'm disgusted that any friend of mine could be so irresponsible as to let her cat give birth, TWICE. What does she think the overflowing RSPCA means, anyway? It's people like HER that are responsible for animal misery in this world, and damned if she's going to make a blog about how cute they are! Criminal negligence, that's what this is." To a certain degree I agree with you - feral cats are a threat to many kinds of native wildlife the world over, particularly birds, and I don't want to add to that problem. Abandoned cats with nobody to take care of them are also a problem.

However, in my defense, the following points:
1. Cat overpopulation is not much of a problem in D'Kar. Dogs are much worse. Possibly there's a situation much like the one in India, where the overpopulation of dogs makes sure that the cat population stays low? Also, though people here like to keep dogs as guard animals, far fewer people keep cats, or want to keep them. Animals aren't pets so much as workers, here.
2. At the time that Melissa got pregnant for the second time, it was extremely difficult to get her fixed - although a vet has now come to Ghanzi that will fix female cats, a few months ago you had to either go to Maun or wait for the travelling vet to come from Gaborone.
3. I was sure the second batch would all have homes to go to - a lot of people in the office were interested in her first litter but there weren't enough to go around. I think they're gaining populatity as rat-and-snake catchers on the farms.
4. Though I've never thought twice about this before, it felt like such a betrayal to cut off her reproductive future. Melissa isn't a housecat. She isn't a docile tame animal, dependent on humans for survival. She's a wild thing, who would barely let me touch the tip of her tail when I first started feeding her; I've left her for weeks at a time and she scavenges or hunts, fending for herself very ably. I'm not her owner, her mistress, or her life support - I'm sort of like a doting sugar mama, and she's a proud individual who comes in irregularly to eat, when she wants to and ONLY when she wants to. Of course she's been a bit more regular since her babies were born in my closet, but otherwise she's quite independent. So - although I'm going to do it as soon as she weans these kittens - I still feel quite guilty about it. I think that this could turn into a long discussion about the ethics, definition, and consequences of domestication, so I'm going to stop here, but please don't be too horrified by the kittens. I know it's irresponsible, but life is a beautiful thing... isn't it?

Transit II

Is there meaning in chaos? I realize that this account of my travels is overly long and somewhat repetitive, but I think there's some sort of buried insight about transience and transit, and the value of keeping connections alive though you may be half the world away...

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Upon arriving in Victoria, I spent most of my time with my family and taking care of various life-admin things, such as renewing my driver's license and going to the dentist. Boring yet necessary. I made one trip to Vancouver, getting a ride with a friend to the ferry and boarding that beloved boat, Swartz Bay to Tsawassen, an hour and a half of gorgeous scenery and terrible food. When BC Ferries handed over management of their cafeterias to White Spot, I wasn't very happy. (Random thought: I've just realized that Swartz Bay probably means “Black Bay,” right? Why? I've never thought about this before...)

I passed a blissful weekend in Vancouver with some of my best friends, then took the skytrain + bus back to the ferry terminal, for another ferry trip and then two more buses back to my house. Side note: the Vancouver subway/skytrain system is being overhauled for the Winter Olympics, and it was a fairly new system already – the contrast with the New York subway system is overwhelming. You almost wouldn't believe it was the same category of transit. Spacious, clean, dry stations? Equally spacious, clean trains? No clattering, no mysterious stains, no drafts of suspicious-smelling underground air? The Vancouver system may be objectively superior, but give me New York's subway anytime.

A couple of days later, my dad me to the airport at 5:00 a.m. and I got on a flight to Toronto. I was picked up in Toronto, drove to Guelph, and spent five days in Guelph. I'd always assumed that Victoria was a college town, but I now know better – though Victoria does have a lot of college students, it is by no means a college town in the way that Guelph is. The entire downtown core (if it can be called that...) of Guelph is dominated by students, in the form of hipster bookstores, cheap dive bars, late-night eateries, and of course the hordes of students themselves, partying every night in their ironic plaid shirts, too-tight pants, and I'm-An-Individual shoes. Aside from that, it is picturesque and peaceful. I had a lovely time with a very special friend, managed to meet up with a couple of other old friends in Toronto, and then on September 28^th found myself back at the airport.

My next destination: Ann Arbour, Michigan. However, being as I went for the cheapest flights available, I ended up flying from Toronto to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Detroit. In Detroit, I cleared customs & immigration with a stolid, swarthy, middle-aged man. He asked me where I was going, and upon hearing my answer, he announced in a gruff voice, “oh yeah, go Wolverines!” My only response to that was an extremely blank stare. “Not a football fan, then?” “No.” “Alright, go on through.” STAMP. STAMP.

My college roommate and VERY CLOSE FRIEND picked me up, and we drove to Ann Arbour. Arriving in Ann Arbour felt like I'd stepped through the “America” mirror and entered a very-slightly-different version of Guelph – the university is the same size, the town is the same size, the architecture and climate are roughly the same, and there are the same multitudes of organic grocery stores and cheerful college students. The first night there, I attended a small concert given by a travelling folk band. Their opening act was a 21-year-old girl who performed (among other things) a piece entitled “three generations,” which involved her mother, her grandmother, and herself all playing one cacophonous note on recorders. This subtle masterpiece of avant-garde performance art was greeted with enthusiastic cheering from the crowd. (The main act, thank goodness, was actually very good, if a bit twee for my taste – Anna Ash and the Family Tree - what can I say, I'm a sucker for a girl with a mandolin...)

Two days in Ann Arbour, and then on September 30^th I flew from Detroit to New York with the discount airline Spirit Air. (Discount airlines: good or bad? For short flights, I think they're fine – but if you have a lot of luggage, they do charge for every checked bag. The service was, in general, very good. I used to really like the Canadian discount airline Zoom Air, until they went out of business.) On this flight, I managed to sit down with some unusually friendly seat-partners: an extended-service plan salesman from Florida (with roots in Spain, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad), and a 40-ish secretary from Detroit who was fulfilling her high school dream of moving to New York City, and had her beloved cat Allie (get it? Allie the cat? ALLEYCAT?) in a carrier under the seat in front of her, ready for adventure in the Big Apple. We drank a couple of beers together and arrived in New York pleasantly tipsy and ready to take cheesy cell-phone photos of ourselves with Allie and the ubiquitous Montty.

In New York, I spent one night at my aunt's apartment, then took the train to Princeton, and spent one day/night there having various reunions and recollections. Not too much reflection here... only that I was sad to leave, perhaps sadder than I've ever been to leave the campus. It was a combination, I think, of (1) the wistful knowledge that the next time I come back, there will be no current students who know or remember me, and (2) a gradual fading of the frantic need I had to get out, which I felt so strongly when I graduated. I suppose I've made my peace with a number of things that happened while I was at school, as well as simply with myself and the experience of going to Princeton, or going to college at all. Anyhow, leaving campus on the noon train, watching the still-lush forest clackity-clack away, I felt a sorrow that I never felt when I graduated.

I slept one night in New York, then a night in Brooklyn with a very close friend from Princeton, then back to New York for some more reunions with various people, including a dear old, old childhood friend who came from Montreal to visit me in New York. Next, a mad dash to Grand Central to get a train to Brewster, Connecticut. At the Brewster station, I was met by old friends from my time in India, and we drove to Bridgewater, where we ate a lavish and delightful multi-cultural dinner, and reminisced about Kodaikanal. They have two young children (whom I taught while I was in India), and it was shocking to see how much they've grown up since I saw them last year. I suppose I must seem much the same to my aunts and uncles – young, growing quickly, etc. I've stopped with the physical growth but hopefully the intellectual/spiritual/emotional growth continues?

From Bridgewater, we made a hectic 5a.m. criss-cross of Connecticut, going at top speed from Bridgewater to the Hartford airport to drop someone off, then to New Haven to drop me off at the train station and another girl off at Yale. I got on the train back to Grand Central, but it was running late and I therefore missed my train from Penn Station to Princeton, where I was going to meet with my thesis advisor. With little sleep and a high stress level, I fed several dollars worth of quarters into the Penn station pay phones and tried to reorganize my already-crazy second visit to Princeton, then hopped on the next train. Luckily, my advisor managed to rearrange another meeting and we talked for about half an hour; next I had lunch with another old roommate, who took a two-year hiatus from her degree but has come back this year to finish it. She laid out a smorgasbord of cheese, substantial salads, crackers, breads, fruits and vegetables, and I did sweet delicious justice to it before speeding back to the train station to go back to New York. Once back in the city, I had just enough time to get back to my aunt's apartment, pack up my bags, and get to JFK for my next flight.

In JFK, I went to the Iceland Air desk – visions of Viking aircraft hustled along by Odin's lightning bolts running through my head – and checked in for my flight to London, via Reykjavik.

Transit I

Montty in Toronto, CN Tower in the background

I've long believed that this newfound modern ability to traverse the globe as though it were our backyard is an unsettling thing; surely it does something very strange to the body and mind to zip back and forth between hemispheres and time zones, crossing lines of latitude and longitude as quickly as you'd pass mile markers on a dirt road, were you moving at a more natural pace. Jet lag proves the confusion of your circadian rhythms, but are there not other bodily rhythms, more subtle ones, which are disturbed by skipping through multiple time zones, kilometres of altitude change, and a complete reversal of the seasons, all in the space of 24 hours?

I don't mean to say that because it's “unnatural” it's bad – I love technology and clearly I love air travel, despite the appalling pollution it causes. (Every time I step on another plane, I see with guilt-wracked eyes the image of my carbon footprint expanding and expanding...) However, beyond the pollution problem, I feel that somehow it must upset one's internal balance. Chaos! Or perhaps we get used to it.

Without further ado, then, an appropriately chaotic recounting of my travels, focusing on transit.

September 5^th, I left D'Kar by car at about 4:30 in the morning, driving to Ghanzi to catch the morning bus to Gaborone. Nathaniel drove me through the chill, dark morning, helped load my backpack onto the bus, and then drove back home to sleep. I slept on the bus, on and off till we reached Jwaneng, the centre of Botswana's mining operations. The bus always stops at Jwaneng for 20 minutes or so, and the passengers get off and buy snacks. We reached the Gaborone bus station at about three in the afternoon, where I got in a taxi that took me to my hotel.

The next morning (Sept. 6th), the same taxi came to pick me up. The driver, however, was extremely late – his girlfriend was in the car with him, laughing as they careened around the corner and pulled up in front of my hotel where I'd been pacing angrily in the dark. They drove me to a different bus station, where I boarded the bus for Johannesburg. A few hours to the border, where we all got off and went through immigration – then a few hours more into Jo'burg. I was meeting a friend from Princeton, so I got a taxi to Zoo Lake and then – due to road blocks – walked almost a kilometre with all of my bags to get to the Jo'burg jazz festival. Later, we drove to her house for dinner, and then she drove me to the airport.

Flight: Jo'burg to Amsterdam. Mixup with the ticketing counter because I was spending 24 hours in Amsterdam, which falls in-between a proper layover (in which you spend more than a day between flights and must check in for the second flight separately) and an in-airport layover (in which you are checked in for both flights and only spend a few hours in the airport in between flights)... I had to check my luggage all the way through, but they couldn't/wouldn't give me a boarding pass for the second flight. I think that this was a mistake on behalf of the KLM desk at the Jo'burg airport, but I'm not sure. Anyhow, arrived in Amsterdam mid-morning, checked into a hostel, and wandered around the city in a daze of severe culture shock, like a waking dream. Rented a bike, went to the Van Gogh museum (excellent!) and felt that perhaps his paintings from the mental institution and various states of insanity were a good representation of how I was feeling.

The next morning (Sept. 7th), took the train back to the airport, and almost missed my flight due to problems checking in – the Amsterdam airport couldn't understand what strange alchemy the Jo'burg airport had worked on my booking. First I waited in a very long line for the automated check-in, which couldn't retrieve my booking through any of its 3 methods; the machine directed me to a second long line, which I waited in, only to be told that I needed to wait in a THIRD long line to actually speak to a KLM representative, a haughty and picture-perfect blonde Dutch lady who scolded me for having a messed-up booking and then sent me through to security with the warning that I didn't have a seat assigned yet and I'd better get to the gate on the double to have a seat assigned there. Panicked, I raced through customs where a couple of snotty, pimply twenty-year-olds delayed me and made fun of my accent, and then dashed to the gate – where an endless caterpillar of people were lined up, waiting to go through interrogation by a private security firm contracted by the US government to screen flights going into the States. ARGH.

With their big black suits, garish ties, barrel chests, and snazzy earpieces, these guys were not interested in hearing the pleas of a dishevelled young girl carrying a stuffed monkey. I waited at the back of the line, in order to answer a barrage of pointless questions, generally driving at the point of “has anyone had a chance to smuggle CRAZY DRUGS into your bags?” It was kind of disgusting how obviously they profiled by race or nationality – I explained that I'd spent the day with friends in Jo'burg, and that the bags had been left unsupervised (by me) in their house while I went to the bathroom or had a shower. “Oho,” the man said, suspiciously, glaring at me through his wire-rimmed glasses. “So you had to go to the bathroom, hmm? Friends in Johannesburg, hmm? How exactly do you know these... friends?”

“They are AMERICAN, we went to PRINCETON together, that is how I know them,” I snapped back.

He immediately relaxed. “Oh, Princeton, well, congratulations! What year did you graduate?” What bullshit. I suppose the name comes in handy, but I always feel irritated when it does.

Nevertheless, successfully got on the plane, and blissfully watched movies till we landed in Seattle. More (perceived) racial-profiling adventures there: while waiting to collect my baggage, customs & immigration officers roamed the room doing spot-checks. A naive-seeming young officer had been asking various people questions about their visit, their bags, and so on – he'd asked a wide variety of people, both male and female, old and young, and mostly white. Then he stopped to talk to a tall African man (not African-American, but African – I could tell from his accent and the colour of his passport) who had just descended into the luggage collection area and therefore hadn't witnessed the man talking to the other people. “Excuse me, sir,” the officer began, “can I see your boarding pass and passport, please?”

“No,” replied the man, immediately and boldly, with an aggressive glint in his eye. “What for? I just came through immigration.”

“Well, sir, it's just standard procedure – we're doing double-checks of everyone down here on the floor.”

“No! I refuse, I don't have to show you anything. You have singled me out. I will not.” He put his hand protectively on the breast pocket of his shirt, where his passport and boarding pass were tucked away.

“Sir,” the officer tried again, looking nervous and embarrassed, “really, we've been asking everyone – it's a new policy of the airport. We've got to double-check everyone. Please may I see your passport and boarding pass.” He held out his hand tentatively.

“No! I am not giving you anything until I see you asking other people." The African man drew himself up to his full height with extreme dignity. "Ask some white people. I have done nothing wrong, I'm not showing you anything. This is discrimination! You cannot do this to me!”

At this declaration, the officer looked even more nervous – obviously the race issue had been in play since the beginning of their interaction, but for this guy to drop it so blatantly made him desperately uncomfortable. I was holding my breath, waiting for something to erupt – after all, giving trouble to a customs & officer is generally a really bad idea, whether you're in the right or not. And in this case, though the African man couldn't know it, the customs officer really had been asking a wide range of people, and it really did seem to be a new airport policy. The potential for explosion was there. Thankfully, the young officer backed down, and went back to asking white people. I collected my bags and left before I could see if he approached the African man again - however, on my way out I was accosted by a different officer who gave me the same routine questioning, so it seems to be true that they were trying to double-check everyone.

I re-checked my bags and then went to the gate for my short hop from Seattle to Victoria. Waiting at the gate, I was overcome by a fever of consumerism, a sudden compulsive desire to buy seemingly necessary things. This is how my stream of consciousness went: Oh look! A newspaper. I should buy the newspaper, I'm so out of touch with the news, I miss the New York Times – and maybe a magazine, just to read on the plane – and I've been awake a long time, I should really get a coffee – maybe a snack, probably a muffin or something – and then I guess I'll be thirsty, so I could grab a bottle of water, and then a pack of gum, or maybe some mints, I do like mints more than gum... WAIT, WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?! A quick mental calculation – though each item seemed reasonable, altogether it was almost $20, a percentage of my monthly budget in Botswana that I didn't even want to think about. I bought one large green tea ($1.79) and sat down with a book I'd brought from Botswana with me ($0.00). I could barely read, though, looking up every thirty seconds to see what time it was, to see how many minutes closer I was to reaching my beloved home. At last the screen above the gate flashed on and the loudspeaker crackled to life - "NorthWest Air is happy to announce boarding for flight 5121 to Victoria. Any passengers travelling with small children are welcome to board now..."

During the flight to Victoria I drank in the scenery with ravenous eyes: the deep waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca fading into turquoise shallows and then grey-gold beaches around the myriad islands off the coast. Thick conifer forests rising and falling with the contours of the land. The scars of logging, exposing the cragginess of mountains not yet eroded by roots and weather. A few quiet houses with threadlike roads peeping in and out of the trees; no cars. Spindly docks with tiny toy boats moored to them. The scaly ripple of sunlight on the water, waves that would swamp a small boat looking as delicate as mosquito netting from the airplane. Cloud-shadows, moving without regard for land or sea. It's as beautiful as flying over the Okavango, in it's own way.

The flight passed quickly. We landed in Victoria and I stepped off onto the familiar tarmac of the small airport, breathed the familiar air, scrutinized the airport windows to see if I could spot my mom. In the baggage claim I was hopping from one foot to the other, pushing the cart back and forth, willing my bags to arrive faster. Then I was rushing through immigration and emerging, practically running, into the airport where my mom was waiting with open arms and a helium balloon.

The Prodigal Returns

"Tall tree and the eye," Anish Kapoor. At the Royal Academy of Arts, London

I returned to Botswana on Friday, the 9th of October. The stories of my travels are long and convoluted - I think it would be fun to recount the trip purely in terms of ground covered, without any explanation of why, because from that perspective it was an utterly ridiculous journey. Actually, perhaps from any perspective it was an utterly ridiculous journey. Regardless, I had a wonderful time and have returned in the best possible spirits, feeling refreshed from the trip and also happy to be back in D'kar. I feel a renewed sense of confidence - this isn't what I want to do forever, but it is what I want to do right now. I don't want to live in the village forever, but it is where I want to be right now. Visiting old friends reminded me that I'm still the person I've always been - small changes, of course, but essentially the same. That's reassuring. And a large part of that person is an academic. I will be applying for graduate school when I get back from Botswana.

I'd worried that when I stepped off the plane, back into the blistering heat and flatness of Botswana, I wouldn't want to be here - that the afterimages of tall green trees, skyscrapers, mountains, and old friends would fill me with regret. Not so. As I said, I don't want to stay here forever, but I really want to be here right now. I hate to keep restating that, but it's very important to me. I think that the contrast between this arrival and my arrival of a year ago, when I first set foot on Kalahari sand, is also helpful. Everything that was alien then, is familiar now.

Further reflection on that later. As one might expect, I'm busy untangling a giant, messy knot of "things that should have been done by other people while I was away but in fact didn't get done at all," so I haven't had much time to blog. BUT I WILL.