As I sit here listening to Diamonds

As I sit here listening to Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon, I think of what has happened in the past 2 years of my life – has it really been two years?   I love Africa dearly.  This has been the experience of a lifetime and I know all of you are thinking, with YFU, Friend's World, etc, doesn't this boy have his share of 'experiences of a lifetime.'   I don't think I have though.  Just today, I was freaking out because I realized I only have 2 weeks left in Homoine.   This is the town I've called home in Mozambique for two years.  Through think or thin Homoine has always been there for me.  Now it's time to say goodbye.   It's going to be hard, but it's time to move on to the next point in my life – even if it is only 21 kilometers away.  I'm just finished with my life at this stage.   Then I sit here and think how blessed I am that I can just say "I'm finished" and move on.  Please God, let me find some sort of career that enables me to continue along this line.   The joy of being in Africa is that if I have a bad day, I will always have tomorrow to look forward to.  Or in some cases, I can look forward to a time maybe about an hour later.   Life here tends to be an emotional whirlwind.  Mozambicans are always ready to party and take any excuse for it.   So I'm going to bow out gracefully and not through a party for my going away.  After all, I'm not going away.

 

I had an interesting conversation with the Brazilian in town today.  He recently got into a fight with some English ex-pats two towns over because of a project we had all done together.   I don't know if you remember, but I invited a group to my town to do a musical performance (concerning AIDS, as everything in my life seems to be concerning now) and we all went out for this crazy dinner afterwards.   Well, you put 2 Brazilians, a Portuguese, 2 Mozambicans, 2 Belgians, an Austrian, a Frenchman and an American at a table together and out comes a very interesting conversation – which was recorded, unbeknownst to everyone but the person who pressed play on the recording machine.   My friend, the Brazilian, got very mad because he is working on his own material and he wouldn't want this recording published unless he was certain of all that he said.   But getting back to the conversation I had with him today, he was calling them all under achievers in their own countries so they come here to an under developed country and suddenly they are gods.   That got me thinking, am I a second rate underachiever that doesn't have the ability to make it in my own country – or can't?

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~Ian~
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