lists, and lists of lists

Earlier today, driving home down Dunkirk, with the familiar voices of the CBC providing such lovely, undemanding company and the traffic flowing smooth and easy, I felt pretty -well, comfortable. Travel can be a real spoke in the wheel and I suppose I'm just about due for one. It has been awhile since I've gone anywhere far, and the lists I've been making are bringing back some memories of the efforts; physical and otherwise, of travel. 

repair soles of boots

rehydration powder

appt. for malaria meds

immodium...

And what about music? a travel soundtrack is very important. Besides offering needed reprieves from crowds or unwanted conversation, music is a mood-shaper and a beauty-enhancer. But it has happened before that the music I bring doesn't make sense where I am traveling. It sounds wrong somehow, is an ill-fit. I went far up north once, when I was with the army, and lived in a tent on the ocean. The rock/pop music I had with me seemed so trite in all that vastness. The landscape was too profound. I needed something hugely operatic, or something minimal and wordless. Obviously it will be a different situation altogether for Africa. I am wondering if the Icelandic art-rock band I've been partial to lately will fit there?

Leaving in a month!

For years I have been waiting, rather impatiently, to begin a relationship with Africa. I've read the books, taken the African history class, and watched so many documentaries that they are beginning to blur together. All of them, it seems, depict children playing soccer, line ups for food, women sweeping huts, machetes and mass graves, and well-meaning white NGO workers in khaki shorts. And they all seem to be about the resilience of the African people. I wonder about this. I watch these documentaries in the same way I, as a nursing student, examine a patient's bed sore. How can they live with such a raw open wound? What do they do with the pain? Whenever I meet an African immigrant, I am as inquiring and polite as any Canadian should be, and yet I really want to stare at them. For an inappropriate amount of time. And I want to find out who they are, and how they got to be who they are. I know I might not be able to ever understand them completely, but I certainly can gain more understanding than I have now. I worry, sometimes, that my fascination with all things African might be a little naive.   

And so, in attempt to become less naive, I'm heading to Tanzania with the CPAR study tour. On the trip, I expect to be frustrated, inspired, surprised, tired, overwhelmed, and uncomfortable at times. It'll be great. I hope to observe the relationship that the CPAR staff have with the Tanzanian people, I hope to learn a little of who these people are, and above all I hope to gain insight into how I might begin to have a real relationship with them myself.