Back in the Big ‘Sumu

November 9^th, 2006

November passes quickly, but there is no change of seasons here. The days are not growing shorter and the nights not colder, despite what Modest Mouse is singing on my iPod. It’s going to be shocking going back into higher latitudes and frostbite, but I think I’ll be ready for it – a cold weather girl am I. (Which is why it makes so much sense I feel my calling is in Africa?)

This past week has been running around getting ready for my ISP, which began yesterday. I am currently sitting on my bed in what will be my home for the next three weeks in a hostel in Kisumu. Tomorrow I’m meeting the woman who is supposed to hook me up with hospital staff and NGOs, and if she has nothing for me, I’m effed in the a. I’m also effed in the a if my ethics approval doesn’t come down early next week, because I only have three weeks in the field as it is. Fingers crossed, ya? I’m not worried – yet.

There hasn’t been much time to catch my breath since Uganda/Rwanda, so I’m pretty tired at the moment. The one thing I’m jealous of from the kids who went to Tanzania is that they got branded by the Maasai. That’s just fucking baller, and I so would’ve done it if I were there with them. But I don’t regret my choice at all: Kigali alone made all the hours of travel crammed into that matatu worth it.

It’s also crunch time for everyone back home. Break legs, people.

I’m pretty sure I have Dump Wars: Return of the Giardia (or Giardia strikes back? A new giardia?) because I’ve been mildly ill all week and I feel almost exactly the same as I did when I had giardia, although not quite as bad – I think I’ve built up a smidgen of resistance! Go bowels! But tomorrow, I’m to the hospital to get tested and maybe get some new, better dugs, because I’m pretty sure the first round didn’t work the first time. I was planning on waiting till I got back to the states to do all this, but I can’t let illness get in the way of my study, even if it is only mildly annoying. Or maybe I have something new and exciting, like worms! Strange Tropical Disease Count: 3? By the way, I so win the award for studying abroad in the least developed country EVAR of all my friends.

November is an important month for me. Mama Rose and I had a long talk the other day, serendipitously, about my parents. And in eight days I will have lived two years upon this earth without my father. Let me put it this way: the older I get, the more I realize how truly young I was when all of those things happened. You never feel young in those occasions, but in retrospect, I was.

Anyway, ISP begins! I won’t be around as much (was I around a lot in the first place?) because my days will be spent in field work and my nights in reading and writing, but I love you all muchly, and the days of us being apart are getting fewer and fewer.

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