A Moment in Malawi

(With all due apologies for not posting in forever and ever...)

After far too long, Desirée and I are together again, this time in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was a long schlep to get here. I took a flight from London to Abu Dhabi to Johannesburg, and what with various buses and mix-ups in between, it took about 30 hours from leaving my doorstep to arriving at my hotel.

The Abu Dhabi airport, where I had a six hour layover, is a wonder to behold. It's surprisingly small (albeit not for long -- they're currently building a multi-billion-dollar addition, because in the UAE something doesn't even officially exist unless you've dropped a few billion on it), and feels like the inside of a magic mushroom crossed with a tokamak.



I thought that it would have been altogether improved by the addition of a large circuitous caterpillar smoking a hookah, but maybe that's just me.

Desirée, meanwhile, spent a week with some dear friends in Malawi, where she took the following amazing photo. There's a story behind this photo, but I'll let her tell it some other time.

to begin again, or not...

Wow, I must apologize profusely for not making a post in the past 6 weeks. I have no idea where I would even begin, so for now I won't. The past two months have been both incredible and terrible at various points, and I am learning so much. In two days (early in the morning on Saturday, the 8th of December) I fly to meet my dear friends Dustin and Cara in Malawi. I will be staying with them in a town in southern Malawi called Balaka, and meeting all the kids of Bola Moyo (the non-profit I worked with all last year) that I have heard about for so long. While I am there I anticipate that I will not have internet access. Anyone who urgently needs to reach me can call me on my friend Cara's phone:

+265 04104731
(for all of you in the states, I believe that means you'd dial 011-00265-04104731. If you have a hard time, try omitting some of the zeroes.)

Ten days after that, on the 18th, I fly to Johannesburg, where I will meet up with Nathan after not seeing him for 2.5 months. A few days after that we fly to Cape Town where we'll be spending Christmas. I anticipate having much better internet access in SA than I've had here in Kenya, and at that point I'll be uploading some photos to this blog! Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here is a (sorry, poor quality) photo I took of the sunset last night here in Takaungu while I was at a friend's house for dinner. After it got dark, the stars were so beautiful I could not stop staring at the sky. I wish I could have captured it and shared it with all of you.



I come back to this beautiful place on the third of January.

Happy holidays everyone. You are greatly missed.

~Desirée