I have found it hard to be patient while waiting for the piece of paper that says my visa application is in which is probably as close as I will get to a visa. For me the wait has meant going to meet the lawyer in Union Coffee in the middle of town every second or third evening for the last two weeks. Sometimes he shows, sometimes he doesn't show, sometimes he shows eventually after two hours.
While we wait we sit at one of the tables on the verandah and trawl the dregs of the menu; coke or ginger ale is 50 cent, tea is a euro. This would be an ideal opportunity if we were coffee drinkers but we are not which is a great shame as Tanzanian coffee is among the very best.
We play cards. We bought a pack of cards with us but only know one game which was taught to us when we were with the Maasai by three Maasai gentlemen. We were waiting for Camilla to finish up with her last patient of the day. That day we knealt in a circle on the dry ground and there was great laughter and pantomiming of the different rules and I lost every time.
In Union Coffee I have perfected my skills and manage to beat Davy as often as he beats me. We wait.
The cafe is at a cross roads and I grow used to it. People are continuously passing on foot and last night, for the first time, I began to realise that many are the same people I have been watching every night and I loose the feeling of sitting still as the world passes by and begin to comprehend that THIS is the center of the world. The picture of the neighbourhood builds into four dimensions with layer on layer of passing footprints as people go about their lives and return, direction and intent marking invisible lines that weave a whole.
The waiting had seemed interminable to me and while I sat there I could not remember a time when I did not wait or imagine a time when I will no longer wait. I railed against my circumstances “Why am I forced to sit here witnessing a random cross roads for two weeks?” But that very question releases me and it is then that I suddenly perceive the stillness that all the movement is contained within and I feel the privilege of getting to sit on the bank of the stream of all these lives.
Of course the moment I fall into stillness my own life can move on, David the lawyer comes with my piece of paper and we drive home in the pitch black dark.
Other things are moving on too; myself and Patience saw 54 people this week in four different clinics. Davy and I met Pastor Lameck who is leading a group of people in Malawi who are studying the correspondence course that Jeremy has written. As I write Pastor Lameck, who came to Moshi to pick up his group's exam papers, is still three hours from home having left here 48 hours ago traveling by bus. And Jane, the new volunteer, arrived in the middle of the night last night from Ireland with, among other things, 50 remedy bottles donated by Jean Blake of Homeopathy Supplies Ireland so now we can divide up the remedies and fill in the blanks in the three remedy kits that head off with us every day to all the different clinics.
There have been a lot of changes in the volunteer house where we are staying and it has been pretty unsettled but Jane's arrival marks the beginning of what will be home to us for the next four months. Rebecca arrives with her husband in the middle of the night tonight and that will be our family complete. On Sunday the whole HHA team; Camilla, Jeremy, Roger, Patience, Michelle, Jane, Rebecca, Mr Rebecca, Davy and I will eat together and on Monday it all begins again.
Pendo is still doing ok and we are all very hopeful that she will pull through.
Friday Morning Meeting; a chance to iron out the wrinkles, plan the coming weeks clinics and maybe discuss a difficult case
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