Last night, which seems like a week ago already, I snapped this shot of the sun setting behind some exotic foliage.
Tonight I’m in another town, another district, but I’m still holding this memory. It was a peaceful stroll before dinner, and there were insect noises and frogs croaking.
Most of all, there was this southern light, here south of the equator. It’s different somehow, more brilliant, lit from within. I’m glad I was there to see it.
This was one of those days when most of what I saw of this fascinating new country was through the window of a car. Work trips are often like that. And you know what? I’ll take it!
Today was one of two days we’ll spend in the capital city, Lilongwe. Tomorrow through Thursday we will be “in the field” — although all of this seems like “in the field” to me since I usually work in Arlington, Virginia.
But “in the field” also means seeing the project’s work close up, and that’s what makes these trips so valuable. Instead of just writing or editing stories about vegetable production groups or village savings and loans, I will actually be experiencing them first-hand, meeting the people whose lives are being changed.
In the field? Bring it on.
(Above: One of the sights I saw out my window today. You’re never so far out in the field that the colonel can’t find you.)
Malawi is known as the “warm heart of Africa,” and has so far has lived up to its name. The people are friendly and the weather is hot and muggy. The rainy season has begun, and as I write these words the storm that was brewing in the distance is now pounding the Mafumu Lodge in Lilongwe, where I just got settled.
Even on the 30-minute drive from the airport, the scenery didn’t disappoint. The plains stretch out for miles with jagged-edge mountains rising from them. Trees are sparse and twisted in that way that says “Africa” to me. Women tote loads on their heads, men ride bicycles, children run barefoot along the road.
There is that great jumbling together of people and place that happens when you travel, the awareness, even in my sleep-starved brain, that the world is so much bigger than my little corner of it.
Last night wasn’t a long one for me, hemmed in on both sides by packing and writing and preparing for eight days away. But that’s OK, I tell myself, since I’m about to be on Malawi Time, which is seven hours ahead of us.
Until a few weeks ago I wasn’t entirely sure where Malawi was. I knew it was in southeastern Africa, but that’s about all. Now I know it’s bounded by Tanzania, Moazambique and Zambia; is dominated by Lake Malawi and has just commenced its rainy season.
Winrock has a wonderful project there, working to curtail child labor, which is higher in Malawi than most other places in the world. Thirty-eight percent of children are engaged in it, largely in the tobacco fields.
I will be traveling throughout the country, meeting students, teachers and others who are fighting to change this. One of them is Leonard, who was so inspired by the anti child-labor club at his school that he coaxed his friends’ parents into sending their children back to school.
It’s at moments like these, when I’m nervous about leaving my home and family, that I remind myself of the people I’m about to meet and the sights I’m about to see, God willing. And then I realize, all over again, how privileged I am to do what I do, how grateful I am to be able to see the world in this way.
(Look closely at the picture above. That’s an elephant, a photo taken on my last trip to Africa, to visit Suzanne and Appolinaire in Benin in 2015.)
Usually I sit on the aisle. But not when the American West is involved. Yesterday I grabbed a window seat so I could snap the vistas when I saw them … the jagged peaks and dark valleys.
… a river snaking through brown hills,
… a blue lake shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece,
… and the snowy, showy Grand Tetons.
I was never quite sure where I was — but my phone camera’s location finder knew. We flew over the Cascades, down to Pomeroy in southeastern Washington State. From there over Sugar City and Dubois, Idaho, to Bridger-Teton and Medicine Bow National Forests in Wyoming. And from there, we flew into Denver.
Those were the geographic realities. But from my window seat I saw only shapes and shadows, geometric purity. It seemed like I was seeing the essence of things.
Yesterday morning the fog in the air matched the fog in my brain. It flitted between my ears like so much cotton batting. I walked to the light rail line hoping both fogs would clear, the internal and the external.
I was optimistic, because it was already brightening, and though my breath came out in clouds, the humidity added warmth.
By 2 p.m., the sky was blue, and we’d found a place to grab some lunch. The mind was thinking clearer. And the Seattle fog … was gone.
To live in a city of hills is to know long views and low valleys. It’s to feel that pain in the back of the legs that comes from uphill climbs. It’s to know the slow trudge and the quick downhill.
It’s not always easy, but ease is not always the point.
As I prepare to leave Seattle tomorrow, I will keep many images in my heart, snapshots of a city that Celia has grown to love.
I will remember the city blocks and the flaming maples and Mount Rainier looking down on it all.
It has brought a psalm to mind — timeless, eternal source of strength: “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
It’s where Seattle goes on a sunny day … or at least it felt that way last Sunday. There were lovers and families and dog walkers. The elderly in wheel chairs and walkers. Cameras with tripods, their earnest photographers snapping shots of engaged couples and even a bride.
Kubota Gardens is an oasis of green in the midst of the city. Even a city as green as Seattle, one nestled between water and mountains, needs the relaxation potential of an urban park. Kubota satisfies all the senses: the splash of water, the aroma of autumn leaves — and everywhere, flaming foliage, artful arrangements of flower and leaf and grass.
I did a lot of people watching on Sunday, a lot of strolling and stopping, a lot of deep breathing. It was just the respite I needed before a hectic week.
You can call it a bed and breakfast, an Airbnb or a VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner), but when you come right down to it, you’re staying in someone else’s house. Someone you didn’t know before and will probably never see again.
But while you’re there (here), you become intimately acquainted with the play of morning light on window blinds, the amount of pressure required to turn the faucet, the location of the bathroom light switch so you can flick it on in the dark.
I’m a private person, one who doesn’t take naturally to early morning conversation with strangers while making a cup of tea … but somehow, this works for me.
It’s calming to stay in a house rather than a hotel. It feels as if I’m part of a community and not just visiting. And indeed I am — just one member of a band of travelers who want to see a place from the inside out.
The Chief Sealth Trail winds its way through southeastern Seattle for almost five miles. Though I’d read about it in my Airbnb welcome note and tried to find it on a map, it was proving elusive to pinpoint — at least in cyberspace.
In the long run I literally ran into it. Walking down 32nd Street, I saw a rise, an opening, a grassy meadow, a break in the cityscape. It was the trail!
I turned left, and the sight almost took my breath away. There was Mount Rainier looming large in the sunset sky. I couldn’t find an angle that didn’t involve power lines, but there it was, Seattle’s iconic mountain.
When I reached my place, I told Cris, Airbnb host, how excited I was to spot the peak. Oh yes, she said. But you can see it from our house, too. She led me to the dining room window, pointed off in the distance. And there it was again, only slightly less imposing.
Sometimes, peak experiences are closer than you think.
