Kilima Njaro

So here I am in Tanzania, in Moshi in Kilimanjaro, my almost second home. The jacaranda trees are blooming and the mangoes are falling, and it’s a beautiful morning. At the end of this journey I'll have been out of the country for about 3 months this year, which seems astonishing. I can't really claim that this trip is adding love miles, but it's certainly care-very-much miles. I got to see some people here that I am so happy to have shared a part of my life with, who live thousands of miles away in lives in some ways very different to mine and in other ways so similar, people that I'm amazed and moved to find even remember me let alone with fondness and real joy. I feel great joy to get to share some of my life with them, and to share in some of their lives, and that's all we can really ask for or expect, so much of the time. It's what we have to be grateful for and I feel very grateful. I was very happy here when I lived her some years ago, and part of me wants that happiness back, but more wants the new, different happiness that is solidifying, partially through coming here. I am profoundly grateful for just being here. It's lot of airmiles of course, and it's mainly for work and combined with other things to maximise its 'productivity', and it's added to the carbon crater I've already excavated this year, and there are so many other angles to it. Eventually I'll work out what this all means and how it all balances, or what I'll do to balance it, but right now, I am grateful and happy to be able to visit a part of my life and the people I care about who inhabit it. It may be thousands of miles away from home on another continent, but I'm here, and right now that's what counts.