Safe and Unsound

So then, I'm here and all that. Too early for any astute cross-cultural observations: so far I've been asleep in Zambia (19 hours, if you can believe it) longer than awake (6 and counting).

It was a harrying trip, first across the sea to the Netherlands for a surprisingly vice-free 9-hours in the second-hand smoke, beautiful mullets and people-watching of a Western European capital. Then out across Europe and the Mediterranean, over the Sahara and River Nile into the stereotypically African landscape of long, blonde grass and Acacia trees in Nairobi. From there it was but a leap to Lusaka, where customs would make Canadian healthcare look a model of efficience.

As the sun chased me from Europe, I thought of what the people I'd just flown over would wake up to this week. Tunisians walking to morning prayer. Kenyans dragging themselves out of bed for another bustling week in The Cradle. Darfurians, waking up to uncertainty. The herds of animals on the plains, the fish in the Great Lakes. And there I was a little dot in the sky passing over this vast continent, wondering what my reality would be when I woke up.