remembering

to be back in africa has awakened that special piece of my heart – the piece that inexplicably loves having dirty, dirty feet and can handle eating baked beans on toast every day. i wouldn’t enjoy either of these things in the absence of the beautiful zambesi river - flowing quietly less than 10m from my verandah - which is where i now sit.

i knew i was excited to come back here, but i had somehow forgotten the depth of love i have for mwandi village, zambia. today, i remember the million things i love about this place, and my heart is happy. my feet are filthy, but my heart is happy.

getting to mwandi was an adventure. i flew into livingstone ready to pick up some groceries and jump on a bus, squeezing my hips next to what i assumed would be an african mama suffering from the same over-sized hip condition as me. but a phonecall from my friend fiona left me with slightly different travel plans. (side note – fiona is the incredible australian woman who set up and runs the feeding/education project i will be working with for the coming months – she is one of my heroes.) fiona told me i had to go to her mechanic in livingstone and pick up her 4WD/tank and drive it out to mwandi. as an afterthought, she added, “there’s a 30km stretch of road just outside mwandi where the potholes are really bad, so be careful.” a few rough calculations in my head confirmed the fact that i had about as much off-road driving experience as a toddler, so i replied, “no problems mate, i’ll see you in a few hours.”

i buckled up and hit the road. the first hour of driving was without incident. the second hour was not. the potholes snuck up on me like little zambian ninjas. i said a few rude words to the ninjas, swerved off and on and back off the road like any toddler driving a tank would, and found, surprisingly, that i was still alive. this scenario repeated itself  an alarming number of times during the proceeding 30km. “how did you go mate?” says fiona when i arrive. “really good. no problems at all,” i reply as i discreetly try to remove any remaining gravel and mud from between my teeth. big. fat. liar.

i went to say hello to all my friends at the feeding centre shortly after i arrived in the village. i was hoping they would remember who i was. upon walking through the gate, a bunch of kids began screaming and singing a song to me which i had written and taught them 3 years ago. they remembered. one of the volunteers from the project ran to me smiling and wrapped me up in a huge african hug. she remembered. today, i remember the million things i love about this place. i remember the many times i have visited here and been changed by the lives of the poor. i remember that we cannot live by bread alone, so we must buy baked beans and tinned soup. i remember that hot running water (after 2 months of showering in a bucket) is as beautiful to me as a gilmore girls marathon on a saturday afternoon.

sometimes, to simply remember and be remembered, is the sweetest thing of all.

ps. i totally got my nose pierced the day before i left india. i look like a pirate. a nice pirate. the kind who would sing cheerful ditties about the ocean. not the kind who would steal your jewellery or terrorise your womenfolk. 

roses

during the last months of my mum’s life we spent many hours together ‘getting stuff done’. there was no order in mum’s body, no rhyme or reason for why she, and not someone else, was living through what she was...so we coped by finding order and reason where we could; rearranging cupboards, dusting parts of the house which, to my knowledge, hadn’t been dusted in 30 years, sorting old photos which had previously lived happily in boxes in the garage, and we ‘got stuff done’ in the garden.

lisa (housemate and adopted daughter) and dad painted pots and there was a frenzy of weeding and watering. from what i could see there were about 3000 pots in the courtyard of our small townhouse...but lynnie wanted more. she loved her garden.

for days, mum and i were on a mission to find new pots for some of her plants. we put her wheelchair and oxygen tank into my car and drove off to explore the world of gardening shops. one day, we drove for about an hour to a big gardening shop in the middle of nowhere. i got mum’s wheelchair ready and loaded her up. what followed was a 2 hour lesson i’m going to call ‘places you should never, under any circumstances, try to wheel a wheelchair.’

the place was huge. it was on the side of a hill and every single walking path was made of quicksand or deep, chunky gravel. after about a minute mum said “don’t worry kato, let’s just go.” but i could see her looking longingly at the ocean of coloured pots stretched out before us and didn’t have the heart to pack her up just yet. i was covered in sweat within a matter of minutes. we must have looked ridiculous navigating the least user friendly walking paths i have ever seen. a combination of wheeling backwards and pushing her forwards while holding her in the position of a wheelie seemed to do the trick, but it was hard work. eventually we found the pot she wanted. beautiful blue. mission accomplished. we laughed and smiled at the stupidity of it all as we loaded up the car and headed for home.

a little way down the road we saw a sign for a rose farm. “would you mind if we stopped just for a minute so i can go and smell them?” stopping to literally smell the roses. it’s not actually possible to say no to that. so we unpacked again and i stood back and watched in amazement as my mum smelt roses with a look of pure joy on her face.

we eventually made it home and i went to have a shower...i was an absolute mess. as i removed my pants i was delighted to discover a hole in the back of them about the same size as a cannonball. i may as well have been wearing butt-less chaps. i have no idea when it happened. all i could picture was the hours i had spent bending over, pushing a wheelchair uphill...WITH MY BUM PROUDLY ON DISPLAY FOR THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE. i laughed. lots.

here’s the moral of the story. whatever struggles you may face today, smile and thank God that you’re facing them without showing your bum to the whole world. unless, of course, you get home and find that you too have a hole in your pants. in which case, welcome to my world., it’s nice to have some company.

and also...don’t forget to smell the roses.