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Well, after 50 hours in transit, I arrived in Edmonton at 11:30 PM on Friday.  I had about 5 hours of sleep during that time, and over the next few days I am going to have to get back to Alberta time.  I still feel the time difference of 9 hours, but is shouldn't take too long.  I'm visiting with friends down in Edmonton, staying with Jordache, and will head back to Fort McMurray mid-week.

I don't really have anything else to say, but I wanted to end this blogging with a thank-you to all of you who followed along with my trip.  I didn't have the luxury of enough internet time to read your comments, but I just went through all of them this morning, and thank you.

As for pictures, I never did get any up, but you can check out the albums that will soon be appearing on my facebook page.

On to America

Did you know that the Malagasy, since they adopted the French school system, count one less continent than we count? So do the French apparently, but this does not concern them. Anyway, the Malagasy count North and South America as one continent, as apparently the Panama Canal just doesn't cut it. Literally.

I just spent the last week on the road, traveling north from Ifaty to Tulear, Tulear to Ranohira, Ranohira to Ranomafana, Ranomafana to Antananarivo, which is where I am now - sitting in the airport while I wait for my flight to JFK. I have so many stories and anecdotes that I am going to have pare them down to a few worthwhile ones to put down here on the blog. In the meantime, as I leave Africa after my first visit, here is a piece of writing that attempts to capture a little bit of what my time here was like in the sparsest way possible.


Ambiguous Africa

A heightened awareness of the me in my skin
Living on the cheap
Priceless; sights, sounds, smells
Horns doing what signal lights, mirrors
and driving on one side of the road should
Distended bellies, abject povert, Hope
No concept of Personal Space
Quickly returned smiles, Spiteful faces
The ever-present language barrier broken
by signs, funny faces and laugher
A culture of easy hand-outs
Responsibiliy through serendipitous birth
Crushing overwhelming insurmountable problems
Appreciation of Home
Difficulty in the Simple
Syncopated dancing raising road-side dust
Empty water bottles as precious commodity
Greetings through colour identification
Children too small to know to ask, piping
"Cadeux" from afar with a smile and frenzied wave
The impossibility of true integration
Present Mortality
Simple Solutions

The inability to ever fully express personal experience
This is Africa - to me