Crossing the border into...September?

How did it get to be September already? Equator weather confuses me. The minor changes in temperature seem like variations in an eternal summer. Yesterday, in the early morning Kitale air, David the Manor House driver had the heater going in the van as he drove me one last time to town. As the bus pulled out, I noticed that all the other passengers were wearing coats and I was the only one wearing only a short-sleeved shirt. Margaret, the head caterer at Manor House, told me that if I came back in December or January it would be hot and dusty. Not fresh and wet like a morning after a night of rain.

Tanzania will have to wait til another year or lifetime. After working like crazy to finish a newsletter for Manor House, I was finally booking a departure when my beloved Heather and Hanna emailed to say they had finished their teaching and filming a week early and were ready to head back to the U.S. So together we birthed Plan B: to converge back in Uganda, where we started two months ago. H & H flew from Dar es Salaam yesterday and I took the slower, cheaper, funner, and only way I know to get here in one day from western Kenya. A series of matatus got me here before sundown: Kitale --> Bungoma --> Malaba --> Kampala -->Entebbe. Plus a final ride on a mini-bike boda. I rode on the back (wearing my daypack) while the driver managed to keep my suitcase upright in front of his body, and he dropped me at our meeting point, a hotel near the airport where we can enjoy a couple days together.

So I found myself crossing the border at the same spot where I passed four weeks ago, and riding in the back seat with a young Kenyan going to Kampala to start school on Monday at Makerere University, sharing biscuits and bananas from my snack bag and from the vendors, and moving slowly through the crazy Kampala traffic, then so relieved to get to the shore of Lake Victoria while it was still the first day of September. H & H were here waiting for me and now we're enjoying a pause. Soon they are going and I am staying.

Last week I found out what happens when I don't get to the internet for several days. Friends start conversing on my blog! Maybe that's another reason I've come here - to connect people at home! I hope all of you who are reading my blog but not posting comments are at least READING the comments. And because I have internet access RIGHT IN MY ROOM at this moment and I want to post this note before H & H get back with our milkshakes, I'm going to respond to my commenters right here in public. Regarding the size of the world, it seems huge when you're flying from that side of the planet to this side, even though that's trotting at jet speed. It seems small once you land, anywhere, because life is here, everywhere, in both its familiar and unfamiliar guises, and it becomes shockingly obvious that we are all breathing the same air and sharing a slice of the same experience.

MY question is, how big is the world for those who live in the towns around here where travel happens by foot (or matatu), and you go only as far as you can walk, and your food feeds you as long as it's coming out of the ground, and your kids are in school now but you don't know if they will be able to continue? Or you got a bachelor's degree in social work (like the guy next to me on my last day at Royal Cybercafé) and you're still looking for work two years later? I know imagination stretches way beyond physical boundaries but how far is that? I feel like a walking lightning rod for imaginations because so many people have a deep wish to go to America and they feel one step closer when one of us shows up on their doorstep. Is the world small enough for some of them to make such a journey? I tell them how far and how expensive it is but I can only wonder how did I get here and what am I going to do about the smallness that I experience?

Abrupt subject change (but also an answer to a post by one of my favorite redheads): I didn't even notice the altitude, but then I didn't start running in Kenya until my second week there so I think my lungs had adjusted. But I also know there's a big difference between 6,000 feet and 8,000 feet. When I used to run Santa Fe trails on my visits to Marie, my running was seriously impaired by that thin mountain air (and I was never there long enough to acclimatize).

Here's something I want to tell Don and all other running enthusiasts. Turns out I WAS in Kenya running territory but didn't know it until my very last morning. I was not out there trotting along but sitting beside David going to catch that first matatu early yesterday morning when I suddenly saw a sleek, fast runner approaching - unmistakably a strong runner, with the relaxed body that belies a fast pace - and then another runner, and another. "Yeah," David said, "this is the part of Kenya that produces lots of runners." He said they "practice" most mornings, with a trainer, running the entire length of this hilly dirt road, the very one that I've been enjoying, east to the edge of town then back to some point farther west toward Mt. Elgon (my feet haven't gone more than a few kilometers in that direction). He said there are three groups - the one around here, one in West Pokot (north of here) and one south a ways - and they get together and compete, and of course many compete elsewhere in the world. "Some of them get sponsors," David said, "and they come back and buy big cars." Lightning rods come in all nationalities.

I have to finish a vanilla milkshake now. Thank you everyone for reading and posting! And I've loved getting your emails!