in the airport

Well, so here we are, sitting here in O’Hare, getting ready to board the plane to London…

This last few weeks has been busy, just that whole process of getting ready to go, making sure everything is packed up, the house is taken care of, work wrapped up smoothly, etc etc. For me, it was a bit of a rush, trying to take care of all the things at work that I had to finish, making sure that the things that I usually do were handed off to others.

Last night, Rose asked me how I felt about the whole process thus far, and my response was that the whole thing felt much more like handling business than dealing with some sort of emotional process of preparing for a long journey. I think back to the first time I went to Africa, sitting on the front porch, preparing to leave the next morning. I was a bit mystified, excited, anxious but ready. I felt like I was stepping into a vortex that would catapult me into another world. I had been outside the country before, one time traveling to Jamaica on a journey with a bunch of people in High School for a service project, but this was something else. I was the only student in my University going on an exchange program that no one had gone on before. It would be one of the first times that I would be truly independent, and besides that, it was for a year.

I sit here on the other side of the years, much more pragmatic, a little less dreamy, preparing to board the plane and go to visit Zimbabwe and my wife’s family. (Of course, she’s here as well, she always gets pissed when I speak in terms of me instead of we, but so it go.) I guess I feel a lot more prepared looking towards the experience now. I’ve been to Zimbabwe, traveled from Mutare to Vic Falls, (west to east) lived in a families’ home, walked down the street, etc. Last time I was there, I was carrying locks, and I wonder what the difference will be between the vibes I got from folks due to that and the vibes I’ll get now. I remember walking down the streets of Marondera and all the stares that I got from people.

Just the other day, as we prepared to leave, we heard word that some bombs had gone off in London. Once again, the chaos of this modern world hit smack dab into the face of the western world. Of course, for us, it is a bit scary, thinking about spending the next four days in London, but I suppose once it’s happened once, the likelihood of it happening directly after that is slim. I sure I hope I don’t have to see the kind of knee-jerk patriotism in London that Americans showed here in the States after people slammed those planes into those buildings. Its really a shame that a few people can have such a profound affect on the perception of so many others. Now days in the western world, at least in the feeble minds of those Dubya loving hordes, Muslim is almost a bad word. It really sucked to watch the way people responded to that whole scenario, and how Dubya took it and ran with a swaggering arrogance into Afghanistan and then on to a new war in Iraq…

But, I’ll leave that for my own blog, let’s get back to our journey to Zimbabwe… So, the main reason that we’re heading to Zimbabwe is so that Rose can see her family for the first time in four years. In these past few years, she’s graduated from Grad School, got married, and adapted to her life here in the states. This is the first time in four years that she’s had a chance to be home. It will definitely be exciting…