Ramblings of a Whenwe

I’ll leave the blog name for now but I had to change the byline. Change. It’s slow to come and fast to happen no matter where you are. After 12 years in Tanzania, I’m back in Canada with 2/3boys. Importing DH is at the top of my to do list.

About a month ago we were getting on a city bus with our backpacks, going out to the burbs to stay with my folks for a night or two when Boy B asked: “Mom, are we refugees?” “Nope, we’re economic migrants who are very lucky not to be living in the Jungle,” I replied to amused glances from a couple other riders. Either that or they were smiling with pity at 2boys for their mother’s ranting.

No more empty promises on regular posts. As ever, I am so very grateful for some real encouragement and support to properly make this a regular exercise. What’s different when you land in your hometown among old friends and family after more than 15years away? Everything and nothing. I’m keeping notes and digging through notebooks from a life that I left only 9weeks ago but it feels like a lifetime.

We’ve been moving since 01January this year and it is really good allow ourselves to settle in. We’re feeling very fortunate to have landed and moved very quickly into a comfortable house with an easygoing room mate. Having time to take time to get to know our neighbourhood and settle into housekeeping for ourselves is a blessing that is a challenge to put into practice but we’re getting there.

I had some business cards made up with this picture. The colour is a little washed out in print. The stone in the background is Ugandan granite. It is a grain grinding stone that DH picked up along the highway in Uganda on a route survey trip some years ago. The shell shaped object is called the Shiny Turd or something equally scatologically funny to 9 and 12yr olds. They made it by melting down their fishing weights in one of our last bonfires by the ocean in Dar es Salaam. They poured the molten metal into a shell – which may have been a smallish land snail shell BTW – and then when it had cooled, they broke the shell away. I folded up the boxes from animal print origami paper my sister gave me ages ago. They represent my empathy with every other human being trying to get and keep their shit together. Peace and love to all.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQSH_PvAov4/?taken-by=kristaranacher A picture is worth #1000words Dear Mama Keeping in touch. Sorry. I’ve neglected this space for so long. Some lovely folk have been encouraging me to write/publish so I’m going to riff on some of the pictures I’ve been sharing on Instagram. Having joined relatively recently, I am quite enjoying Instagram because the pictures are accompanied by stories and comments and links that take me to interesting places. If it occurs to anyone to click on the link to my blog it would be good to find something recent. I posted this pic from Dodoma when I was there on a school trip with Boy B. A week in the company of 41 eight and nine year olds was an adventure of note. It was really good to get home. I can now look back on it fondly from the other side of the second weekend back at home. We’re still unpacking from a quick post Christmas move. I reckon that if I can organize/empty one box per working day I might have the job done in about a month. We have too much stuff. Meanwhile, this last Saturday we organized two dhows to take us and a few friends to the sand island we can see from our stoop when it emerges at low tide. Such breathtaking views. 7adults and 8kids, the later are so spoiled from living beside the Indian Ocean that most of the grown ups completely tuned out their various complains of hunger, thirst, missing shoes, refusing to wear hats and we eventually all fell silent soaking it all in. It takes about 40minutes to get there. Dhow sailing boats have been in these waters for at least a millennium and a half if not two. These two were “modernized” by the addition of a relatively small outboard motor but were otherwise traditionally built with all wood pulleys and fixtures. If we weren’t perched on the gunwales, we were sprawled on the tarp covering the fishing nets that were stowed in the bottom of the boats. We were promised that on one way they would hoist the sail which is a marvelous thing to experience. They didn’t in our boat this time but they did in the other on the way home. These dhows were hired for us by the handyman and long term resident of the property where we now live. They came from the fishing village just up the coast. If I get to see them again, I will ask the crews how old the boats are and how they came by them. It could very well be that they have been handed down through generations. Their price for the day was more than reasonable, they knew and handled their boats as extensions of their own bodies and they were helpful and cheerful through challenging children and authorities. DH has decided that next time he wants to go at night and have a bonfire party. I don’t know how he’s going to allow for the windiness of the place or the navigational challenge of getting home in the dark. He’s going to have to discuss that with the dhow captains. Even if the later are keen to do it, I might not be brave enough to go along. And here we are Monday. As I write, a sunbird plays in the water thrown up by a sprinkler into a hibiscus bush. I just tried to sneak around to get a picture but I startled him away. I can hear the whistles and chatter of the alien but resident parrots. They’ve become neighbourhood mascots after it is suspected they’ve been abandoned and/or released by former residents of the neighbourhood. These ones are African Greys but I also know of a Ring Necked Parrot that was lost here by former residents of the very house we now occupy. That was years ago but it is not implausible that Timothy could still be around. Happy Monday all.