Tanzania. These little blurbs are getting increasingly difficult to write. Every attempt brings a flood of images, each with a different feel and it's own narrative. It's hard to find one theme, and impossible to follow it for long before another rises against it.

Three days ago we were sweltering in the Maasai lowlands. In the day we huddled, lethargic and somewhat grumpy, beneath the lifegiving shade of the baobab tree, miserably swatting at the dauntless hordes of Maasai flies. Two days ago we retreated up the long, winding escrapment road to Masumbo, our campus tucked in the highland hills. Trucking down to the river, soap in hand, we swam and sudsed and rinsed and laughed and even shivered a little when the clouds covered the sun. Today we do not swim because that river is at flood stage, and we are bundled in fleeces against the incessant downpour that has turned our yard into a squishy mudpuddle overnight and soaks whoever dares to venture forth.

I can't help but think of the people of Uhambigetu, clinging furiously to the base of the mountain whose springs provide the only drinkable alternative to the undrinkable saline sludge they dig out of temporary wells in dry riverbeds. Two weeks ago, the cornstalks in their shambas were showing too much leaf and too little fruit: sure sign that they are not recieving enough water. They have replaced a tropical forest with their shambas, and in response the October rains start later and later every year. This year, the first rain was the gift of Christmas Eve. Did the rain rain on them today?

In Maasailand we lived for nighttime: we could sit without sweating and move without hopscotching from shade to shade. Even the ever-present acacia thorns didn't seem so bad in the dusk. We ate the evening meal, sang, and danced: first the Maasai way, joyful, energetic, skillful, and atheletic, with a completely vocal accompaniment of rhythmic noises that stir the blood and move the feet and call you to join in with your own grunts and harrumphs and wails. Then in the American way, with giggles and laughter and the clumsiness of amateurs attempting to swing, electric slide, break dance, macarena, train, whatever we could think of to try to the scrounged tape of Congolese rap blaring from the back of the Land Rover. The Maasai joined in with the limbo, and in the improvised strobe light effect of blinking headlamps, smiles were smiled and laughs were laughed.

In the burning heat of the day, we watched the women industriously manage the daily chores, laughing and smacking the cows and roping them deftly while Sangeni, our host, pointed out which goats were born when, and which cows milked which calves, and held forth on the finer points of herd management with dignity and panache. The young men slaughter a cow with same cheerful ease with which Josh and Nate and Chris tear into a dirty carbeurator. They are happy and they are not tied to farms and the constraints of city life and they love it. Little Boma on the Prairie. I wonder if they know that little Juma is hydrocephalic, and the flies that crawl unmolested over the lump between his eyes are foreshadowing a the death that will soon claim his body. The same flies that crawl in and out of the oozing, gangrenous wound that will soon claim Sangeni's lower leg. The smiling and laughing men and women with whom we shared fresh roasted goat and the joys of dance and industrious labor live in a world where a man beats his wives who know nothing of his friendship, and care little for it, for they have the fellowship of the women of the compound. They love their lives, they are proud of their children, of their cows, of the homes they have built with their hands. They enjoy the milking and herding and birthing, the dances and feasts and celebrations: the life of a pastoralist. The very life that requires wide open spaces, a non-cash economy, and low population densities: barriers to effective medical care and education.

The mailbag was a treasure chest by the time we returned to Masumbo. One large box in particular set off explosions of joy and excitement as it brought forth handmade valentines from friends at school, ensconced in an avalanche of jolly ranchers and tootsie rolls. Our hearts were full to overflowing as we remembered and imagined the friends we left at school. All the news lifted our spirits, and I wanted to write back immediately with laughter and rejoicing for friends engaged and friends dating and new excited EMTs and friends reunited and all the stuff and wonder of everyday life.

That same day brought news that a fellow student was dead, in a car accident, and another barely holding on in a coma from the same. Jubilation and awe met squarely by emptiness and terror.

This morning I stood over the river Ruaha on a tall rock. Everything that was familiar, the rock chair where I sit and read half in and half out of the water, the boulders by which we cross to Kibebe, the little rapids that we shoot through and the eddies and wrinkles at the bottom where we catch our breath and play, the sheltered pools where we stand and wash up and the out-jutting rocks we cling to desperately to keep from being swept downstream are all gone. The currents and flows and hydraulics we know by heart are gone, swept away in a mud colored torrent that crashes and boils and roars and sprays this way and that, up, over, around, and back on itself in convoluted twists and turns and patterns too fast and tortuous for the human eye to make sense of.

This is life. The familiar landscape is gone. Something different is here, blowing away everything I thought I knew. It's unpredictable, it doesn't make sense, and it's tragic at times. But it's beautiful, too, and exciting, and standing there what wells up inside is not fear or nostalgic desire; it is wonder and expectant patience. The full story remains to be finished.

Jolts of pain shoot through my brain whenever I stand up too fast. The story my legs are telling me involves some sort of sprinted mile yesterday of which I have no memory. The closest to running I am capable of is the cramped and desperate fifty yard lope to the outhouse. It caused quite a lot of laughter among the night watchmen at midnight last night. And at one o'clock, and two o'clock, and three o'clock and even four o'clock, too. I was grinning sideburn to sideburn the whole time: never have I been this happy in a seated position.

On February 13, 1858, Burton and Speke became the first Europeans to see Lake Tanganyika. Burton had spent most of the journey from the coast swaying in a hammock between two native porters, too sick to walk. Speke was unable to see the lake due to a flare-up of opthomalia. He had spent his time in the hammock, too. Burton was taking only liquid foods because of an ulcerated jaw. Both lasted only a few miles into the return journey before themselves returning the hammocks. Pleurisy and pneumonia brought Speke to the point of raving delirium. At the coast, they convalesced for several weeks before the ocean voyage, Speke by boat for London before Burton, who needed more time to gather strength. When Stanley found Livingstone, the latter did not stride boldy from his tent ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume?") to firmly shake the hand of the dapper journalist. He was laid up with one of many recurring bouts of pneumonia, which would finally claim his life. Stanley was probably not feeling too well anyway.

Times like these remind me that with all that western culture has become rampantly materialistic, self-absorbed, and individualistic, our children do not die of diarrhea. Most the people I have met in Tanzania have no concept for words like "ambulance" and "emergency medical technician." It is western culture that brought into being that angel in distress, Nurse Adkins, with his wonderful chocolate flavored laxatives that (with the help of a mango or two) brought an end to a painful week of debilitating constipation, and all it's attendant side effects: nausea, weakness, chills, muscle aches, headaches, being bedridden.

So it is with great thanks that I sit humbly on the long drop, "driving furiously" in the local parlance, glad to be moving again, and grateful that although disease and ill health is an inescapable part of travel, there are knowledgeable people looking out for me. It's also with a humble realization that I sit here: all over the world people die of diarrhea. Constipation. Malnutrition. Simple medical problems that are unaddressed for far too long. Things that I laugh at. The solutions to these problems are one aspect of western culture that I am cheerfully and anxiously ready to export.