Written yesterday:

My tongue tasted like I had a cold bullet in my mouth and I was starting to feel dizzy, so I left work early yesterday. I woke up on my bed five hours later; it was dark, and I had been having a dream about an old friend. The door whined an alarm, as I slapped out into the cement corridor wearing my shorts. Some guys were sitting around on the sofa and chairs, watching TV. I laughed. It was 9 o'clock. "Well," I thought "I'll go find out about Sarah." She was the girl in my dream. So, I grabbed my backpack and picked my way across the muddy train tracks to the office, by cell-phone-light, to use the internet.

I skyped with my family, I did push-up's on the tables, I wore my wife-beater, wrapped around my head, I danced barefoot to my shuffling music library, I looked at pictures of food. Everything but connect with this girl. It was a hoot.

While the black sky was getting blue, I bid the guard adieu at four in the morning. Back to bed, I slept another two hours and was wide-awake.

Practically skipping, I entered the front room and ate a bowl of mangoes and papaya. I'd been so frantically busy doing who-knows-what (I mean really, I was busy doing nothing) the last few days, and I had the momentum in me. Lunging one way and ready to dive into a million scattered directions, my feet making brush strokes on the ground all-along. If I had a goal, I chased it and looked like I was chasing it. If I found some new route, I would march toward it like it was my destiny.

There wasn't any power at the office, so I trotted out along the main road into the market to find some items for a little Thanksgiving Bash Keith and I were planning. I walked so quickly and with such determination that I forgot all about buying doughnuts and brandy, and reveled in the possibility of my destination. I walked far out past the shops and the cops and the bridge, and the lancing cobalt steeple of the Catholic church, and the road ascended a hill before the docks. Standing at the crest, the fellow who'd joined me said to turn back at the yellow guards and roadblock-- so I did. And veered off toward the Tanganyika beach.

A stony path dropped into the fishing village below, and I buzzed down it like I was being chased, overtaking everyone on my path. That's the way it was all day-- overtaking everyone, going faster than everyone and talking to everyone. I slowed my pace a bit when I landed in the criss-cross dirt, sticks, pink-flowered shade, naked kids, sneezing goats, and excrement that was the village. I didn't want to seem too over-eager or pretentious walking through these peoples' yards and waving at their kids, so I eased up and soaked in some friendly faces on my way, smiling all the while.

And then I was on the beach; hot sand scooped into my sandals and the lake breeze cooled the sweat on my face. The frenzy of activity! Canoes shoving out, some out on the horizon already, some returning with bloated nets; and some were beached, like wooden whales, on the sand. Hundreds of people dotted the shore: women gathering tiny, silver fish in heaps onto platters and canvas; men tugging moorlines and heaving their boats out from the water, or bent over mumbling in the white sun. I threaded between them all, stopping and chatting with many and greeting what seemed like the majority of the crowd! Ha! These people are wonderful; I must have spoken with a hundred different people, today!

On my way across the sand, I met a student name Frank. He showed me the way out of that madness and towards the main road, and we talked about his predicament. He lives with his grandfather who's too old to work, and couldn't find a job because there's no work for young people in this place and really barely any for the older men, either. He can't pay the two or three month tuition for school. So I said "Where's the school? I'll pay for you."

We crossed that main road and sped off into another unknown, this one more-heavily forested. The things that grow here! Everything has spectacular flowers on it-- the most foreign plant forms sprout in hordes like weeds! Soon, we were walking through more villages and past more silly, absolutely wonderful kids and staring old men and chattering women and students in their uniform white-and-blue. And it was really hot. The leaves grew thicker and crept closer on either side of us and huddled over us, like a secret Eden passage. And then, Zam! We're walking the precipice of a steep, green valley and the dirt path led on...

The school looked really nice. The building was painted white like the kids' shirts. I met the principal and we followed him into his office where the payment took place. We wound up talking about my plans at the Kifungo Institute near the FH office, and they said that I "must teach here, too!" Once a week. And, thrilled, I agreed.

And back before lunch. Which I'm about to eat now -- potatoes and fish, so if you'll excuse me.