Day 7

Today, the sun is out! For the first time everything is brillant and glorious. And we take advantage of it, sitting on the verandah that makes us feel oh so as though we are in Rhodesia, talking about clouds and other things that have nothing to do with anything.





Today, some of us will go back to the school. We will finish painting the dirty classrooms, we will print letters on the walls, we will plant seeds we came to sow. Today we will return one last time to receive our thanks.

Day 6

I am sitting in a van, listening to a song about home. A song about a morning star, about a town I know too well. A song that reminds me of you, of home.

We've been stopped, and I do not know what is going on.

'Where are you from?'

'Where are you going?'

'What are you doing there?'

'Why would you want to do that?'

So many questions I feel nobody can properly answer. And all the while I sit, forming my own questions and sending them away to be answered.

I am alright. Are you?

I am sitting, motionless and far away on the side of the road, rising with the relentless heat that clouds our brains and leaves us satisfied with the gaps in truths. What are you doing?

I am thinking of you. Do you think of me?

Day 5

We woke up early and packed simple lunches of sandwiches and water. It was still more than they had and I felt guilty that I had while others have not.

We painted. We dug. We laughed, flinging jokes and powder blue paint at one another.

Tomorrow we shall return for more.

Next week, I will return for more. All my life I will keep coming back for more, and hope someday I will feel it is enough. That I am enough.

I have been given a camera and without any pretentious ramblings of 'life behind the lense' I walk about taking pictures of everything. I capture pictures, not moments. I capture a lifetime in one shot of two children. Some smile, some do not. Not one of them is frowning, crying, shouting and beating fists against the chest of the world for being unfair. But somewhere in that neutrality is a look of serene acceptance, an awareness of what is and a hope, without dreaming too much, of what might be.

Back home, we talked. We discussed and debated but we never fought. Christianity, sanity, science. Organic living, literature, films, evolution. I find myself in a group of people who do not agree with me, but who can accept and love above all else.

After dinner, I showered and the water ran out halfway through. I planned to join the others, planned to read, planned to study. But I am exhausted. My eyes are closing and my mind is slowly shutting down for the night.

Tomorrow is another day.

I hope to be your 'what might be', and someday when we look back it will be what was. If we do it right it will be what will always be.

Day 4

I sit along with a boy and a girl. Everyone else is praying, but we three left the room because we think we know how to pray, but we haven't a clue where our prayers go, and so for now we pray to a different 'god'.

He is studying something which bores him. I do not have to presume, he says so himself. But he wants to use it to enable him to do what he wants to do, to help people. I hope he does.

Last night I went to the orphanage. We walked the moonlit mile down the road and met the 'orphans'. They are all boys. Not all of their parents have died, though they may as well have.

One is 7 years old. One is 19, and barely reaches my shoulders. He is still a boy, though he has not the time of youth ahead of him as we all did. One is dying. One is studying to become a doctor, and though he has been offered scholarships the world over he has returned home to visit his people. One is always smiling, another never does. One is finishing school, planning his future successes. One wants to make a difference someday, another just wants to look after his family back home.

And this one man is saving one child, who will grow to be the best surgeon in his country and remember that man who saved his life. And he will come back to his country, and save countless more lives. One man will change thousands of lives by starting with one.

One man is close to breaking point, but he is hanging on.

When we returned, I jumped into the pool. I dunked my head underwater and as my jeans clung to me, waterlogged and heavy, I screamed underwater to open up the faucet of my saturated mind. I let out the crowded thought in a stream of consciousness, finding comfort in the muffled sounds of my inability to understand.

And then there was you. You, whose accent I teased. You, the only person in whom I could bear it. You, in-your-face, and seemingly attacking but never with ill intent. You, with the strong-mindedness that clashed only because of my own. You with the opinions and the passions I love and share. You, who has so many stories to tell. You, the foreigner, who knew this place better than us all.

We are all friends in this place. We will hold hands and link arms and bend backs to help one another. We will carry together, we will cry about the load and laugh about our crying. We will wish there were more of us.

Last night, I slept.

Change, as it turns out, is good.

Day 3

I open up a crackling diary, with a burnt spine and stiff pages. I write a story that is still happening, and cannot help but wonder what is next. This has barely begun, I promise myself.

Today, we arrive at our destination. But it is but a place of rest in a journey I realise will take us centuries to complete.

We stay with a man and woman; they are married, with two sons. The house is a home, and has been for countless people that have already passed through it. The farm is enormous, but relatively small. The view has me fixated, the ground is useless. Forget about your alien crops, the only thing that still grows in this colony is the grass, the thorny trees that were here long before us. There is still room for them, because they never left.

The other farms are empty. They were claimed and left to die, like young boys who were never going to be any good on the battle field. A battle. A battle of power, and taking. Taking back what was, what was not, was is, what might never be again. Even the grass is threatening to retreat underground where there is no fight for just the next day.

We smoked and drank coffee for the first time in days. We played silly games under a thatched roof shielding us from the neverending rain. We told stories, and we listened to stories.

These orphans are not alone. They are the offspring of children who were too young, who made bad choices or who were the victims of others' ill desires, who are infected and dying, who have tried again and again to rush the process of death. They are the offspring of the dead, of the broken, of the incapable, desperate for capacity.

But they are the children of a man and a woman who will always raise them as their own. From here, they will go to school. They will take it more seriously than any of us did, and report to me daily with enthusiastic updates on their studies. They will live a sustainable life right here. They will be accountants for big firms, doctors who travel the world to study and return to their home to help their people. From here, they will grow.

This has barely begun, I promise you.

Day 2

Barely three hours' sleep in a strange place. There is hardly time for nightmares before alarms ring shrilly and one by one and bodies stir, accelerating as the sense of urgency dawns on us all.

We continue to drive as it continues to rain. Hours are spent lost in a place I thought I knew. I certainly found my way there, but I cannot seem to map my way out of this maze. It is a labyrinth of tall buildings breathing history with every day they stand, landmarks you pointed out as the best coffee in town and that place that burnt down. Everything I see is you, and though getting lost seems unnecessary I am glad for the presence of you and I in this strange darkness.

We leave the city and suddenly we find ourselves in the Eden of our land. The rain persists and everything is wet and green as though we never went near it. This marks the border between home and a foreign place, and we cross as though it is invisible.

It is an unexpected beauty. Though we knew not what to expect, nobody can prepare for this. It may simply be the dense clouds screening a struggling sun, but the light here is different. The landscape is breathtaking without being wholly alien to us, and as we gasp at the thick, moist greenness, the flatness interrupted by smooth bursts of rounded rock pushing out of the clay-like earth to bulge towards the moon like a pregnant womb, we are reminded of home. I, of you, as I envisage showing it all to you.

I cannot tell you that I am safe. But I am. There is nothing here- the towns are made up of toy houses and the streets were drawn by clumsy child fingers to allow play-play cars through. Everything is a little dirty. Someone has forgotten about this place and its people, forgot to clean the floors and give the walls a fresh coat of paint. Children stand around barefoot and still, mismatched and seemingly aimless.

There is no paint here.

It seemed a tedious day of not yet arriving, but no longer being at home.

Tomorrow is another, and we will indulge to let the daylight arrive before we do.

Day 1

I spent the night drifting in and out of dreamless sleep, reaching out and whispering things in your ear. Weeks later I discovered you had heard them, and I was glad. There are things you must hear, and I desired to leave you with these declarations as I left your side for weeks.

We, I and others but no you, left at four in the morning. The early hour, the being awake before there was even a hint of 'Yes, today will be another day' daylight- it was not new. Insomnia, and unconscious panic rendered this my most regular hour. And as the drunk students stumbled around in a ghost town celebrating something they have long forgotten, we snaked our way onto a long road to be more than that.

Nine others. Erratic sleep. Strangers who were fast becoming the opposite. Too few smoke breaks. A gradual build-up of stagnant body odour that nobody could smell because we all reeked of having sat still for too long, sleeping with our mouths open.

I watch this country of mine go by in an 80m/h landscape. First, endless flatness and galeforce winds. There is nothing, no mountain or ocean or any other landmark towards which the wind may be heading. It just travels, and somewhere over this desert nomansland it will stop suddenly, and drop to the dry earth as silently as it came. It raises no dust, and there are no trees to indicate its direction. It simply is.

Hours later I wake suddenly from a bad dream I hope nobody saw. I recognise this landscape. This is familiar, but I cannot say where I am. There are trees, and later crops. More wind, and dust. It lies above the ground, hovering about to make everything blurry and uncertain. Proportions and horizons can only be guessed, and the colours are not right.

I crawl down into the narrow aisle between the seats. My shoulders just fit, and I lie in the dark dreaming of another destination, forming the one I dream of silently in my thoughts. I am not sure where I am going, but someday you will be there too.

We arrive, and it is winter in November. As I stand outside in the rain, my hands stiffen at the unusual cold. With every breath my cigarette crackles softly and I think of you again. Tomorrow holds the unknown, but for tonight I will occupy myself with thoughts of you.