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.