...And I did, just as the messaging system Skype instructs you to do before opening it's main window. After months of silence, I came online to find my beautiful friend, and now official extended family member, Wanja, waiting for me. I have been through thick and thin with this woman, having shared "our city", Paris with her for 3 years, making our apparently yearly pilgrimage to Spain, visiting Portugal and sharing my Californian home with her this last Christmas.
She has left Paris after calling it home for the last 6 years to move back to her native Nairobi, and was promptly snatched up (and rightly so) by an NGO to work as project manager in Juba, southern Sudan for the next 6 months - to be extended to 1 year when they realize how fabulous she is.
She is the feminine power incarnate. For the next 6 months, she is living in a dorm, eating army food, and hunkering down under her mosquito netting while planning a project focusing on gender based violence in this war torn nation, ultimately hoping to establish a youth group and media platform to attack the issue. When asking her to describe the area she tells me..." Samantha, this would be a top tourist destination if it were not for the war."
Always the optimist...and realist.
She arrived just days before her birthday, knowing no one, and being surrounded by people who are at least 10 years her senior who constantly demand that she prove herself capable and worthy of such a position. She is doing it beautifully I am sure.
The chef whipped her up a special occasion banana bread as a birthday cake substitute.
When asking about the people there, and making the obligatory tease about the available men, she says, " the women here tell me the odds are good...but the goods are odd - I don't think I'll have a distraction from my work."
If she read this, she would think I was being over-indulgent and sappy. All the more reason for me to say it.
Wanja, you are beautiful and strong and wonderful. You are taking a path that will be trying and will give you back what most would find little repayment. This, among many other reasons, is why I love you and miss you. May God bless you and may He give you the ability to access the strength that I know is already yours.
Now excuse me while I go get my weekly dose of Hugh Laurie. I will let you know what happens.
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