New Year Kodiak

The Ugandans had it right. It’s terribly cold in this state I call home. And it’s dark now for half the day. After living in Alaska for 27 years, I thought I was an old pro at navigating the midwinter night but I’m having difficulty on some of the gray noontimes. Then, on other days, the sun shining on snow and water is so brilliant the briefness doesn’t matter.

Other “normal” things are insanely easy. Like washing clothes in a machine and then putting them in a dryer. Flipping on lights and not wondering when the power will go out. Drinkable water. Deep, hot baths. Jumping in my car and driving to the store.

And easy access to the internet. The connection to the world I missed the most when I was elsewhere in the world.

Back in my New York Times habit (online, every morning), I am reading, day after day, about Kenya. Jeffrey Gettleman reports of people, in the hundreds, who have been killed by those who are angry and others, by the thousands, who have been uprooted. Emails from Kenyan friends tell me they’re OK but some of them are living in fear. I remind myself that life has a way of going on. Kitale is a long way from Kisumu and Kibera (at least by Kenyan roads) and my hope is for the work of those at Manor House to keep thriving, for the students to continue their agriculture studies, for Samuel and Peris to keep up their program with farmers and AIDS-impacted women and children, and for Esther to find a way into the work she wants to do. The last thing they need is a large-scale setback. Life is hard enough as it is.

After spending nearly six months in Africa, I am working long days to pay the fiddler (she who dances…). I am grateful to a literacy organization for making me focus hard these weeks on a book that is soon to be finished. But when I slap my laptop shut at night and when I open it early in the morning, I’m also working on how to move along deliberately, more mindfully, less consumptively. More pointed in a positive direction.

Don welcomed me back with lots of fires in the fireplace, and I love eating salmon sandwiches with him in the afternoon and talking politics and life. Hanna and Heather blessed us with their presence at Christmas time, as did Don’s son David and Sue. We enjoyed walks on the snowy trails of Abercrombie Park and gatherings with the whole Kodiak family. And Marie is still sending word from Uganda where she's been savoring a five-week break.

The communities that made me part of them are what I miss the most. I’m grateful for friends and kindred spirits everywhere, close at hand and close in thought. Carla in Jozi. Nyongesa in Kitale. Emmanuel wherever he is.

To all of you who still check my blog, I send wishes from Kodiak that the new year be a good one for you. May a new inhabitant of the Oval Office not be the only change we create this year. I for one would like to make this trip around the sun count.