Journeys of the Heart

August 1, 2008

I have learned that journeys of the heart cannot be measured in days or miles.  I have just returned from nearly two months of traveling and teaching in Tanzania and Mexico this summer with volunteers for Concordia College’s Global Language Villages (GLV).  According to my itineraries, I traveled 3852 miles to Amsterdam; 4288 miles from Amsterdam to Tanzania; and 2114 miles to Mexico City, a total of over 20,500 miles roundtrip.  I brought back remarkable  images, sounds and feelings  that I cannot forget.  I hope I will never be the same.

Just before I left, my nephew Dan set up a blog for me. However, as  internet access was very limited and unreliable on these trips,  I reverted to a pencil/laptop diary.  It is from those entries that I will create my blog.

June 2008

It seemed as if I would have plenty of time to prepare and pack, but my list of things to do kept growing longer, time slipped through my hands, and I was beset with technological woes. It was not until 2 am on Monday morning June 9 that I finally tumbled into bed. After 4 hours of sleep, I headed off to work for half a day then to the airport for my overnight flight to Amsterdam where I met up with the other 11 members of our GLV teaching team.

It was to be another eight hour flight before we would land at Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA).  We flew over Dutch windmills, cultivated fields of France, Italian snowcapped mountains, the blue Mediterranean, to the desert shores of Africa.   Then for several hours there were only the desolate and endless deserts of Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia, occasionally broken by an empty road or a spot of green beside a river that quickly disappeared into the sands.  Somewhere, over that unmarked territory,  the tensions and frets of the past weeks disappeared, their traces covered in desert dust.  It was dark when we arrived at Kilimanjaro,  nearly 24 hours after I left.  We were greeted at the Kia Lodge with the traditional fresh fruit juice (pineapple) and a cool washcloth.  I heard again the joyous Swahili  greetings of “karibu” (welcome) and “jambo” (hello).  In a strange way, I felt I had returned home.

Walk on the Wild Side

A quick blog post on a slow computer at the Ibaru Safari Lodge in Arusha, Tanzania. Some punctuation marks don't work, so hope you can understand this.

The trip over went smoothly and I am enjoying my new friends with whom I will be teaching. Yesterday, we went on a walking safari at the African Wildlife Federation West Kilimanjaro Elephant Research Center--walking among elephants, zebras, baboons, wildebeest, eland, giraffes and water bucks (with an armed guard). It was amazing. They regarded us with interest, but only as one more of the beasts that roam the plains. Because it is a private reserve, they give walking tours.  In the national parks, you can only get out of the vehicle at designated rest stops.

Today we walked in a local village and bargained for handmade knives and jewelry, shopped for Tanzanite (rare gem) in Arusha, and went to hear the UN tribunal that is being held here on war crimes from the Rwanda genocide. They had just gone into closed session, but we were able to talk for a while with the head of security about the challenges they had these past 10 years in balancing justice with the need to heal wounds and rebuild Rawanda.

I do love Africa. I will try to write more in a couple of days.[Editing done by Dan, see comments for the original email with original errors]

Return to Africa

I first came to Tanzania with friends last spring (April 2007) and fell in love—with the wild beasts, the brilliant sunsets, the kind hearted people. I knew I would return, but I had not expected it to be so soon. Now, the telling of my first journey shall have to wait.