Coming Home Today

June 17, 2008

Our last day in Africa.  I think it finally hit me this morning.  I woke up early – in Lilongwe, you hear the call to prayer at the mosque only a half mile away – and found myself thinking “I won’t hear that sound again” and the same thing with the birds singing outside our window, and the traffic starting up on the street nearby. And that’s not to mention the sounds of morning in Livingstonia – roosters starting to crow in the distance at 3 or 4 in the morning, women coming to get water at 5 or so, children playing around that same time, hens clucking at their chicks or having little tussles with other hens, neighbors cleaning and washing and taking goods to market.  And the beautiful sunsets here … I don’t know if it is the dust, or the nearness to the equator, but the sunsets are so beautiful.  I feel like I don’t want to miss a moment of our last few hours here.

Justin arrived around 4 in the afternoon after having gotten up at 3:30 to get to the 6:30 bus from Blantyre.  Unfortunately, there was “a logistics problem” as Justin put it, and the bus didn’t leave until 11:30.  Such a long day for him to come and say goodbye and go to the airport with us – it is so Malawian.  When we left last October, Justin went to the airport with us too, and after we say for an hour or so in the waiting area, when we left we could see Justin waiving his hat at us from the observation deck – all the way to the airplane.  There’ll be more tears today I think. 

One last photo of a sunset in So.Luangwa, but it doesn’t really capture the color.