home.

if home is where the heart is then my home is where you are...

just sayin'.

but anyways, i'm at home in california, and it's good. it's nice to get a break, see my family and friends and get to catch up on everyone's life. but though this place is so familiar, and it's where i grew up and where so many people that i love are... colorado is my home now. the home i have chosen for myself, to live.

i can't wait to get back to my house and roommates and david and snow... all i want to do is ice-skate in the snow. and drink tea while watching the snow fall. (school? work? no thanks.)

today i finished my research paper. it's like my baby... despite the fact that even bound, it is laying on the floor. but i'll turn it in tomorrow... probably the best paper i've ever written.

i want to go to guatemala. perhaps i'll flee this place (on may 10, 2009) and go there. i'll perfect my spanish, play with children, learn about their culture, battle corruption... all the things i love to do.

today, because i finished my research paper, i took myself out to dinner. i got myself a book from the library and took myself to atlanta bread, where i sat in a booth for an hour. it was delightful.

i like simple things like that. simple, yet out of the ordinary. stir up my life.

i'm looking forward to going home. maybe it will balance me out again... though i do feel so much more like myself than last week and the week before, i'm still wrestling. maybe the california air will clear my senses and i'll breathe again.

it's my fourth real winter, and i'm still absolutely delighted at the first snowfall. it's late this year, but finally here!

i love snow. i could sit inside all day and watch it falling. good thing i have someone to watch it with me this year!

since my roommate grabbed the shower before i did, i thought i'd write on here. again.

yesterday was a tough day. because of all the stuff about sam and uganda, i didn't have time to really eat breakfast or have my morning coffee (which, thanks to my apparently addictive nature, i have become addicted to), i had a pounding headache all day that wouldn't go away with the help of ibuprofen. a headache and the loss of hope in humanity is not a good way to spend a day.

but, after talking and praying with some of the girls from the team, i felt better. and then a simple hug from the only man for me, i felt even better and slept soundly, without dreams.

how amazing is that while he and i have these weird jokes and sayings from that far-off place, we can also process and share joys and heartbreaks together? though it's true that he doesn't react nearly the same as i do, he still understands without me having to explain anything to him. (people don't understand how we talk to each other sometimes... just know that we're not being rude, we're being ugandan. ha.)

i talked to his sister's boyfriend last night, and felt so lucky to have david here with me. however much i'm sad when he goes away for the weekend, he comes back to me. and though we'll be apart for a week soon and two weeks soon after that, we get to come back here and be together and after that, who knows when we'll have to be apart again?

patience. that's what i learn all the time.

the yellow leaves are falling outside, and maybe the smell that invades my senses when i step out of the door is fall again. it's november 4 (election day! finally, it's over.) and it still hasn't snowed. i love the seasons. i can't wait for the beginning of each.

africa.

i feel like someone just died. and in a sense, he did. my view of him did. the man that joked with us, lead us in bible studies every morning, took care of us, gave us advice, and loved us... isn't who we thought he was.

www.dorcaschildrenshome.blogspot.com

is there anywhere in africa that isn't corrupt? i'm discouraged...

i'm discouraged for myself and the fact that i know even less what i want to do with my life. i can't handle the corruption and sadness and hopelessness of africa...
i'm discouraged for ash and the fact that her trip that she was planning to take back to dorcas (uganda) this summer has fallen apart with a simple email.
i'm SO discouraged for chris and kami. they gave so much of themselves to this home and those boys...
i'm so sad and discouraged for the girls (and boys) at dorcas. what are they going to do?

i don't understand. i'm mad and i'm sad and i feel like i've just lost someone. and i have.

malaria.

i can't believe i'm writing about class. environmental science class, at that. but here goes.



malaria.



do you know joyce and benjamin? sam? beatrice? rachel's sister (can't remember her name...)? they all had malaria when i met them, or contracted it when i was with them. and i didn't get it. because i took doxycicline that my parents paid for, a mosquito net (kindly provided to me, while the kids i was living with had nothing), and bug spray. (crazy strong bug-spray that i buried in my drawer because it is too powerful and it scares me)



but joyce... for some reason, all during class today, as we were talking about ddt and malaria, i couldn't get joyce and her son benjamin out of my head.



joyce. she's a mother of two children, beautiful children. she is educated and speaks great english. and lives in an idp camp. has lived there for five years. that's too long once the war has ended and most of the camp has left. her eyes pleaded with me, as i looked like (and am) a wealthy muzungu (white person). i asked her name and tried to make conversation. she was holding benjamin... i asked her how many children she had. she said "two". and i asked what the little one in her arms was called and how old he was. she answered "his name is benjamin. he's one... but he has malaria". the little boy didn't even look at me, just laid his head down on his mama's shoulder and sighed.



benjamin has probably already died. his mother had no money to bring him to the hospital, and no money for the anti-malarial drugs that he needed. so this relatively educated woman, forced to live in an idp (internally displaced persons) camp, lost her baby boy to malaria. malaria is treatable... with medicine. and if ddt hadn't been banned in the 1960s, benjamin may have lived. malaria may not have been a problem.



it took 25 years for us to completely eradicate malaria in the united states and other more developed nations. the millions of deaths per year could be just a distant memory if only we would care more about humans than we do about birds. (the reason ddt was banned was because people thought that birds' eggshells were thinning because of the pesticide and those baby birds were consequently dying).



i do think that we have a responsibility to care for creation... exercise stewardship over the totality of creation. but i honestly believe that a human life should come before the thinning of the eggshells of peregrine falcons.



this is good, what the world health organization is doing. but no changes have really been made, and the environmentalists who care more about birds than they do about humans persist in winning this war. ddt works! and yes, there are environmental risks to using it... so if it's so bad, let's find a different strain or another cure, or just use smaller amounts so we can save so many lives.



by the way, don't believe all that you hear about how bad ddt is. it's really not as bad as rachel carson made it out to be in her book a silent spring.


this is just what i'm thinking about. (that picture isn't benjamin, but this little one has the same expression that he did).

i live here.

i live here.
http://www.i-live-here.com

i read some of it in comparative politics class today, instead of listening. (do i usually listen? no.) and two and a half hours later, i'm still sitting in it. it's probably innappropriate to cry in class, so here i sit. with tears in my throat, aching to come out. i looked over my uganda pictures again, looked into their eyes. the fact that i've been to and/or affected deeply by people from three out of the four of the countries documented in this book... kinda gets me.

burma.

malawi (africa).

juarez (mexico).

when ye ye points to burma (myanmar) on my map and says "green!" because it's her favorite color, after taking my hand and laughing and leading me on a tour of my own home...

when philipo, not an orphan, cries desperately to be held... when a six year old girl smashes her hand in a water pump and her family is silent against her screams of pain...

when four trips to mexico during my teenage years changes the course of my life...

when i read this book and i realize that what i want to fight for is right and just and true. and i don't know how to do this. i feel stuck in school... too busy to do what i want to do. i'm scared but so ready to graduate. how can i make money to pay rent and eat and save some for the future (!) doing a job i love and am passionate about? where do i find that? i'm scared of not finding it, and always feeling like i'm moving towards it but never reaching it..........

i don't even know what it is i want. want to do. sometimes i feel like i know nothing.

how to live it out now? i'm tired. and shouldn't be. my priorities are not right most of the time... i wish i could make them right.

would leaving again help me figure it out? should i just go and sit in the red dirt and hold a naked child and figure it out there? i want to. but that's so hard for me. i don't know. i'm scared. and absolutely thrilled.

take me. send me. anywhere.