ayohcee

Everything has move on one year: my relationships with colleagues, my coeliac disease having seemingly evolved into a lactose intolerance, my love of Africa and my position on this year's trip to Uganda - it now appears that I am an unofficial Second in Command.
With a soya latte on the table in front of me, and rain falling heavily outside, it's time to pick up my pen and start to write again.
Our trip to Africa has evolved and moved on - many lessons have been learned. British Airways is being avoided. A slightly altered cast of characters from William Morris are participate - with some old favourites such as Grigorios and Jeff.
Our physical journey too has become somewhat more serpentine too. This year we are headed one more to Kabale in Uganda, but we are doing so by way of Rome (where we stop to pick up passengers), Addis Ababa in Ethiopia (where we get off and transfer planes) and Kigali, Rwanda (where we will, for the first time, be staying for two nights).
Another dif…

Il y a un bidonville
dans un petit quartier
de mon esprit.

Ici,
je cherche un petit
fragment
de ma mémoire.

I search and I remember.
It comes easily to me.
Time has passed:
Hope is lost...
Hope is at hand...

Je ne vais pas vous oublier,
Haïti.

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Accept my apologies if my French is poor. I am trying hard to improve it with the help of a Rwandan friend in Kigali. The word 'bidonville' (shantytown - literally 'tin-town') was first taught to me by my mother shortly before I visited Rwanda this year. The poem is really me taking a short walk and expressing, in a veiled way, the frustrating fact that we seldom hear any updates from Haiti following the earthquake there earlier this year.