A Sunday-like Sunday

I am in Port Elizabeth, (P.E.) now, and it is a quintessential lazy Sunday. I am catching up on sleep, grooming, reading, solitude and sun. Stumbled into a sweet coffee shop, then stumbled upon St. Georges park and the monthly flea market where I purchased a carved wooden flower to replace the button on my sweater and dried apricots, which I munched while languidly reading against the kiddy park and people watching. Last night after a sauna-esque bus skipped the station, I was left stranded in a creepy vacant mall parking lot. A kind family adopted me and drove me to my backpackers.

Tomorrow I have a group interview- perhaps the last interview of the year. I hope to volunteer at the Women's Haven here for a few days, before heading to Cape Town to see Mollie's life, and to meet Dawny! As you can probably tell from this post, I am feeling present-bound and more focused on current enjoyment than on deep reflection. This feel alright at this stage. More than okay, it feels good. Though, crunching through some fallen Oak leaves today, I felt a hunger for familiar seasons, one that will be satiated soon enough. I feel like napping, stretching, crying (in a good book kind of way); I feel like kissing someone, I feel momentarily brave.

I am reading Bahjallanie's "Midwives" and though it probably shouldn't, it makes me want to be a midwife in spite of having ruled it out. I love helping people, women, babies, vaginas. I loves science without doctors offices and bureaucracy, and I love warm fuzzies. I think I could be comforting, I know I wouldn't be squeamish. Hm. Something to think about, talk to Steph about.

In Which: the end was filled with laughter

I didn't realize how much I was online until these last few weeks when my absence was noted by conscientious friends, Mom was called, etc. Course I don't want to make anyone worry, but nonetheless it was a cozy feeling to have people looking out for me. Aware of me, even the cyber version of me. I know you're rolling your eyes, but I do have a tendency to think I am forgotten, and to underestimate my friends- not them, but them in my life. I picture myself, when everything is going crappily, crying with the end conclusion (of flooded art buildings, burnt sinks, unhappy endings, wailing: "I don't have anyyyy f-f-f-FFFFFriennndddds!" And Dawn, or Katie, or any of my fabulous loved-ones, exasperated, but kind, reminding me of my own ridiculousness.

Since Durban research I have been traveling with Mollie- another gift I've received from Andrew. We absolutely hit it off from the first moment as I tumbled off that stale buss in East London. Chattering wildly and hyperly as we made our way to the bathroom, she: "ARRGH! I just started my period and don't have my diva cup!" Me: "Ha! Mine's inside me!". With a glee resembling A.D.D. we bought 2 kilos of carrots and yogurt and trundled immediately to the coast, where a peace both friend and sea-related overswept me, and hasn't disappeared since. From then on, we didn't really stop laughing. We laughed as we nearly got stranded there and drank cider and played horrific pool, we laughed as we WOOFED at an organic permaculture farm and dismantled prickly pears and assassinated invasive plant species; as we crashed a farm party (we taught the lady farmers the macarena while the men shyly chugged beer by the fire and gossiped in a middle school parody- apparently we were quite the hit!); We laughed our way down the Wild Coast, as we unstranded ourselves in Umtata, as we perused the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. We marveled at the sparkly depth and magnitude of the stars on the farm where we stayed.

Being in her constant jolly presence relaxed me in a way I haven't felt for ages, and I promptly responded by absent-mindedly forgetting things everywhere I went, which have since been returned through the kindness of strangers. Because of her easy company I checked out of my "reflective travel mode", and just enjoyed. Sharing details, decisions, and company- processing verbally and being entirely myself... We were bad at shutting up to sleep; I read maybe twenty pages during the time we were together. She helped me with my Americorps app (I got an interview!), and even de-boned chicken for a Mexican feast we prepared for a VM focus group with Rhodes Univ. Students.

Rainy day

Don't ask me why, but the rain in Bulungula smells like Michigan air. Which means o me it smells of nostalgia, innocence, magic summers and sadness I'm not old enough for. Too many mothballs of grief for comprehension.

Mollie and I got up for a rain splashed sunrise, from which the sun was as sluggish to emerge as we were to wake. Walking the fluctuating waterline in the liquid dawn, I kept hearing slapping footfalls running up behind me. Whether they were really leaves, paranoia, or ghosts I know not. But I wasn't scared.

It reminded me of other early morning beach walks, it reminded me of reminding myself of my mother. That moment in the D.R., with my toes the first to touch that Caribbean morning foam, and jotsom and ... flotsom? (How does it go?) I was maybe beginning to grow up, because the similarities between my mother and I were comforting, were a dose of her, as opposed to the stereotypical teenage grimace at any familiar resemblance.

I am sitting here in the eco-lodge, fresh solar made Xosa bread and veggie sausage brekky on the way. Mosaics and murals and drift wood chandeliers are above me. It is a rainy day, a rained in day, a day of rain, and the sea is visible just outside the dripping and salty window. There is local jazz playing, and this morning, everyone is slow to wake. We have bi passed the paraffin-powered showers in deference to the water shortage and our own cozy laziness. Need I say more? I am happy.