A couple of good quotes.

I think I posted this quote before but I am going to post it again. It was graffiti on the wall along a canal in Belgium:

"Death is not the greatest loss in life.The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live"                                                       -Norman Cousins

This internal death is what happens when we are too afraid to make change and try new things. This might be one of the biggest lessons Paul has taught me. I remember when I was just 19 and we started dating and we were talking about desires for the future. I have had tendency towards paralysis rather than action when uncertain, lacking confidence to just push forward in a direction even if that direction isn't 100% what I think I want to do. He said it's better to reach the end of life and look back at all the things you have tired even if you never found your hearts calling rather than to reach the end of life and have done nothing or one thing you didn't like. That understanding is a gift to freedom. I think of how much being with someone who has such an ability for future planning has created for me and the boys, and what it means to be here now.

I can't believe we have been here 5 weeks. We will be leaving Moshi in a week. It will be Paul's half term (something like that they call it) break, between Tanzania and Uganda. We will spend a week 'vacationing' here in Tanzania before we move up to Uganda. I will miss so much Grace, the woman working here where we are staying. She has been so kind so much a source of pleasant surprises.  I will miss our Swahili teacher, Sia. Such a woman who is kind, firm and so strong. I will miss too Ben, the gardener here who is quiet and will find a stick to lightly scratch Swahili words into his arm to show me how they are written. I will miss more than that but those three come to mind. Each day there are new things to tuck into my heart. Last week I found a group of deaf people who have a sewing collective and I signed to them (they use the same alphabet as us) in Swahili. They were so delighted to have a tourist try talk to them. When I was leaving one man was almost going to cry with gratitude, I felt the same way, another thing to tuck away.

Another guest was reading a book left here, Scribbling the Cat, and she read to me this passage and I had to take it down too. I feel so grateful we aren't just returning straight from Africa home. We will have some other stops along the way. I have a new appreciation for our friends whom have lived here returning home. This quote seems to sum it up well:

In late December I went home to my husband and to my children and to the post-Christmas chaos of a resort town, but instead of feeling glad to be back, I was dislocated and depressed. It should not be physically possible to get from the banks of the Pepani River to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it is impossible. The shock is too much, the contrast too raw. We should sail or swim or walk from Africa, letting bits of her drop out of us, and gradually, in this way, assimilate the accesses and liberties of the States in tiny, incremental sips, maybe touring up through South America and Mexico before trying to stomach the land of the Free and the Brave. (page 72)

Scribbling the cat by Alexandra Fuller