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Lara Kroeker Interactive

POST 15: Kwaheri (Goodbye)

Today is my last day in Kondoa and I wanted to take it all in one last time before I leave tomorrow.  I’m at that point in my travels where I have to do a major sniff test before I get dressed to see if I am passable to the outside world and not too rank, so I gave my cloths a good sniff before I met Moshi who was waiting for me outside  my hotel at 6am.

We took a motorcycle on the bumpy roads 30 minutes outside of Kondoa to Lake Munguri to see if we could finally get that missing picture of a boat on the lake but the fishermen were nowhere to be found.  Instead we stood and just listened to the quiet of the morning.  As we drove back to town over the bumpy roads and my helmet bounced up and down on top of my head and I felt the warm wind on my face I kept thinking that this is life, raw and unfiltered.

We drove back into Kondoa and I wanted to circle the town one last time so that I could etch the scenes of everyday life into my head. I put my camera down and we just rode over the dirty dusty roads, past the cooking stoves that fill the air with fragrant smoke, past the women carrying water on their heads, past the men and woman leaning against the side of the small brick houses, past the crowds of woman and children waiting to fill their buckets with water, past the children with their homemade toys, past the girls braiding each others hair. These are the things I want to remember.

I’m not sure why I love it so much here but I do.  Maybe it’s because, like everyone else, I am searching for something more, that thing that makes you feel connected to something.

Tanzania is a harsh place and it is flawed but between the cracks in the dry earth you can see it’s intense beauty.   We are all connected and even though Kondoa feels like a world away the things that we do on our side of the planet affect the people here, the people of Kondoa, Cheku, Ioli, Kingali, Kolo.  My friends.

This will be my last post.  Thanks to everyone who read this blog and I hope my daily emails didn’t irritate anyone.  I’m going to work on the website for the next few days after I get back to Arusha which I hope to launch before I get on the plane on the 22nd.  I am so excited to see Loc and Zoe and all my friends and family.  I’m coming home.

Kwaheri (Goodbye) Kondoa. I know that we will meet again soon.