New Chapter

I had a wonderful weekend.

The 3 weeks I spent with a 10 person team came to and end with a two day "debrief" at the famous Kruger Park. A wildlife reserve the size of Israel near the Mozambique border. We stayed at a stunning resort and spent a day and a half on safari with Alfred – a very colourful and very quotable tour guide that took excellent care of us. We saw everything you could think of — cheetahs, wild dogs, "poombas", giraffes, elephants, african buffalo and lions, lions, lions. We had two incredible buffet dinners with all kinds of african goodies – even more pap. Plus, we enjoyed hot showers and television.

The younger girls (with me being the old lady of the group) decided to spend the last two nights in sleepover mode. 6 of us packed into one hotel room and chatted late into the night – I made them watch a few hours of CNN (its been a while without ANY news and of course everyone is concerned about Zimbabwe right now) and we talked about the trip.

Sitting in that hotel room I thought alot about its size and I thought about the size of alot of the homes we had been in – around Masoyi and Cork.

I thought about Isaiah.

He was one of the first people I visited with the home base care workers. A desperately ill man – dying of AIDS who had never agreed to even test for the virus. Dying all alone in a house – half the size of our hotel room.

On Sunday I returned to the campus that houses Hands at Work and moved into my new home. A pretty cottage, I'm sharing with 5 other volunteers at a cost of about 15 Canadian dollars a day. I like my roommates – we all take turns cooking and Darryl – the teacher from Vancouver made us all an egg curry with homemade Naan bread.

Monday it was back to work, back to Masoyi, back out to the same community that I had met Isaiah – 3 long weeks ago.

Monday – I learned that Isaiah died over the weekend.

Alone.

In the little house half the size of our hotel room.