Sylvia's Journal

Lots of wild dreams this night. They are spinning around in my head and as I grasp the tail of each dream it vanishes. Much was about trickery and dishonesty, people hiding things that cannot see the daylight. I think they were triggered by the book I am reading, The State of Africa by Martin Meredith. Annette brought me this book when she visited us in October. It is a great read; A history of late colonial and early independent Africa. There was lots of trickery and dishonesty, on all sides, in addition to enormous brutality and total disrespect of human rights. Unfortunately, there is still much of that goig on. The roots of these weeds are persistent and very deep. During elections time you hear of course more about this than during quiet times. During day time I get more of this via the newspapers.

Yesterday’s sleepless night caught up with me after lunch. I left the office to take a nap. During the morning Josephine and I tied up many loose ends for next week’s workshop and squeezed in a trip to make a courtesy call to a senior ministry of health official, our only chance to see her as she was on her way out to Mombasa for all of next week. She is an important stakeholder. All in all in took nearly two hours sitting in traffic for this visit that lasted barely 10 minutes. Traffic has a domino effect on appointments, with each one being delayed but somehow never cancelled. Boston traffic is a cinch in comparison.

In the early evening I was on a conference call with three of us on cell phones form East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) and another four sitting in a conference room in Cambridge. It was quite an accomplishment that we got our work done this manner. Joseph was actually on his way to the airport while talking on his cellphone with us. Amazing!

I think the entire week of work, my first in nearly 4 months, is catching up with me as well. I find myself walking more and more slowly and acting less and less like my energetic self. I clearly need plenty of breaks. It is good that the weekend is upon us soon. It will be a very quiet weekend, starting with a massage by Eunice early Saturday morning and probably another quiet Quaker meeting on Sunday. Those are the only plans so far. If energy can be saved up and accumulated for next week, this is when I’ll have to do it. Next week will be intense. The workshop starts on Monday and lasts throughout the week with a team that still has not gotten together (and will not, before Monday).