it's also hormones

Spent the last couple days, as usual, adding to the running mental list of blog-worthy material … little things, nuanced things, things that happen right under my nose that seem funny only when considered from a distance. (I can’t say it doesn’t feel turbulent sometimes, being physically in one place - here - but mentally coming and going constantly. Being immersed, being removed.) I like to tally these things, make lists of them, savor them as just-perceptible abnormalities, with probably the same satisfaction somebody finds in his carefully curated collection of shells or books or passport stamps. (This is probably indicative of some personality type or another).

Ok just to get it out of my system: though it’s not something I had previously put much thought into, I learned recently you can drive a manual car with a prosthetic left leg. You’ve got you’re (false) leg on the clutch, and when the time comes to switch gears, you move the gearshift with your right hand, and push your clutch leg with your left hand. Sounds simple enough; the problem is the 2 seconds of panic for everyone involved while no hands are on the wheel and on-coming traffic’s just plain in God’s hands. Well anyways like most things here, it warmed my heart to once again see that in Africa, people make $#!% happen.

But these things don’t really stand up to what I learned yesterday. Someone who works for the NGO died yesterday. Nobody I had even met, and I don’t even know the cause. But, I can’t shake it. This work that I’m doing, that we’re all trying to do over here.

I feel like I’m circling around a point, but can’t find a way in.

Ok, one step back. I spent the weekend visiting three villages where we run the Community Empowerment Program, and seeing it on the ground was seeing it in the flesh. The class is like an epicenter of knowledge. And true to the metaphor, hope and initiative ripple out with the force of an earthquake. (Far beyond the borders of any one village!) People are finding their own agency to make change. What they're chasing is nothing less than their own social evolution. The improvements in these communities, in education, health care, male-female relations, economic self-sufficiency … it’s exhilarating. (Factor in dancing around a fire singing a song, the only word of which I caught was "democracy.") So between that, and the sheer vibrancy of life here … well, I suppose I tend to gloss over context. I forget about where I am; I forget about life-expectancy. I forget there aren’t ambulances here. I manage not to notice the hip bones that show a little too sharply on every dusty animal. And ultimately, I forget that people here live on closer terms with death - and while that may in some ways be healthier than our tendency to push death to the darker corners of our awareness - they do so simply because it's got more presence here. (And it's not fair. That a simple accident of latitude can determine whether you eat or not.)

Aah, sometimes you feel like you’re riding the crest of a wave, and sometimes you can barely swim. And if it was immersion you were looking for, you’ve got it. But it’s a fine fine line between immersion and in over your head.

It’s all catching up with me …. the plain truth is I’m feeling a little too distant from the people I love. Oh this will pass, and I know it’s good for me, but man, it's a tough meantime.