Kipilefti

When I finish the Annie Proulx book (Close Range) it starts to rain. I dislodge the kittens from my lap, go through the kitchen, put out the basins to catch water. Grand plans to wash a blanket, if there’s enough water. I walk over to the shelf in my living room, pick out another Annie […]

And then there are days like this. The kittens slept through the night in my bed; I woke to two small purring solidnesses on the ridge of my sleeping body. Until yesterday I was going over exam answers with classes; Friday is a holiday. I hate imbalance and love symmetry, so these two days between […]

It’s 3.15 in the afternoon. I’m reading in bed under my new, expensive, soft soft soft blanket. The cats are curled up on top of the blanket but not on top of me, wise because I keep getting up to do small things around the house. They were curled up separately but a few minutes […]

We went for a hike: some time ago, Bret and Mama Jully and I were talking, and she mentioned that there are caves around. “A hundred people hid in them, once”, she told us. So we all agreed that, one day, we would hike out and have a look. Today was that day, the morning […]

Pictures are now up on Flickr.

This week is exam week at my school. You know it’s serious because they printed off both a schedule of which exams are when and a schedule of which teacher is invigilating each exam. (Invigilating is one of my new favorite words. It’s British for proctoring, but way better, because it makes you feel like […]

When we stood up from breakfast this morning, we all groaned in unison as our legs complained, and with good reason: yesterday we hiked for eleven hours and descended almost six thousand feet (not counting the extra up we did, requiring matching extra down). (Interesting digression: GPS says that my site’s at 7500 feet, the […]

I went to visit Mama Jully yesterday afternoon. “When are your friends coming?” she asked. “Tomorrow?” “The day after,” I said. She sprang into action: “Then we can go visit my parents today!” Before I’d left for training we’d agreed to visit her village together, and she’d been waiting for me to return to go […]

The tray of food sits in front of me on my bed, the mattress firm enough that my cross-legged weight doesn’t even tilt it. I look at the book in front of me, thinking that my reading here resembles compulsive eating more than anything else: I finished the five Janet Evanovich books my mother sent […]

I think I’ve used up all my mail karma for the next year. While I was in Dar I texted with Jess, visiting Makete to get money, essentials, and mail. She warned me that Posta Mama said I had a lot of packages, but I wasn’t expecting twelve (!!!) packages and as many letters. It’s […]