Arrived alive, if a little sore.

Arrived alive, if a little sore.

I have arrived in Arusha! After 18 hours of sitting in a bus, I finally made it here at midnight. Fortunately, the novice master is a good friend of one of my old Jesuit friends and he came to pick me up. I certainly was quite exhausted, and my bum is a little sore. The trip was, for the most part, quite comfortable. I had enough leg room, and even though the road was in bad condition, sitting in the center of the bus, I didn’t feel the worst of it. I had a window seat that looked down directly to the compartment where my bag was stored, so I had no anxiety over my possessions. Moving by land, I also got a sense for the country here. How many times I wished I could just blink and take a photo of what I was seeing. Perhaps I’ll become a painter someday and capture it all. I was sitting next to two gentlemen from Mwanza who are Catholics from the mabatini parish. I know the parish priest there and we forged a connection. After some conversation, we each settled in our space and rested. Thank god for a 12 hr battery life in my ipod. Between switching it off to converse and zoning into it as the countryside passed by, the battery lasted the entire trip. What does one listen to on an 18 hr bus ride?? I began with some “life stories” from the New Yorker. The Duke of his Domain, written about Marlon Brando by Truman Capote, a story about Katherine white, former editor of the New Yorker and a story of Floyd Patterson, the boxer. This was followed by about 3 hours of poetry from The Garrison Keilor, good poems collection: poems read and remembered by his listeners on his show. I gave a try at John Paul II’s Rise, let us be on our way, but I found it to be to biographical and frankly, a little boring. This came out while the pope was quite incapacitated. I wonder who wrote most of it. I finished the night with Dante’s Purgitorium. Books on tape are a wonderful thing!

Now at the Jesuit Novitiate here I can see Mount Meru and Mount Kilimanjaro from the fields. Mount Meru is 14,000m and Kili is 19,000m. I likely will not have a chance to climb, as it is quite muddy here, but there is a group of Franciscans who lead tours up the mountain for only $300! That is a much smaller figure than the price prescribed by other companies of 1000! I will likely take a short safari into the national park here and the Jesuits have a friend working with the International genocide tribunals.

Where will I go next? I have just heard back from Zambia, so I might make a quick trip down there before flying to Ethiopia. Life seemed a lot more settled, before the war in Ethiopia opened my mind to all the other possibilities. Well, that’s all for now.

Kwaherini (goodbye (pl) in Swahili).