My Sweet Lydia

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Wow…Return to Moshi. 

John and I arrived in Kilimanjaro on Sunday night, and magically all our bags arrived.  I had found that my right knee is bummed in ways that I don’t understand…I just do the exercises and hope for the best and got these great support hose to keep my ankles from swelling (thanks Charlie Register).  (oh they are really cute, too).   

So I unpacked in a fog, and the next day tried to find everything.  Not bad for the state we were in.  We had to get our e-mail new sticks and TIGO is amazing.  I’m not sure why we went to the top, but they were so helpful and a new modem stick has meant much faster e-mail service so much that we talked to our sweet granddaughter Corinne today (got to try Lyriella next week!)

Time moves quickly here but your ability to move through life is slow, so to get the things we needed took all day, and even then lots of things were left or not present.  We understand that the new government, in its zeal to get rid of corruption has left many problems…such as taxes (VATs) that have been put on religious organizations and safari groups that were never on before, and they have not been able to quickly adjust.  Our own sweet grocery store Aleem’s is finding it harder and harder to import items that people beg for because of the new Nationalization orders.  In addition, many government jobs have been for some reason cancelled, and the worse is that doctors on scholarship who have joined the faculty have been laid off from medical institutions because the government has not paid the institutions for their scholarship or their pay. Now we, at KCMC are so short of very good doctors that apparently they are being imported from other countries.  How crazy is that ?  I don’t mind getting rid of corruption, but our hospital is precious to me.

A great deal of my time has been spent trying to improve my apparently unhappy right side.  I have no idea what the area around my knee is really doing but the utter sadness about not being able to either run or walk distances without enormous pain is just ruining my quality of life.  I have been happy to return to the freezing International School (the Norwegians love the temperature, my hands freeze) to swim just breast stroke and walking (though freezing) and doing these crazy exercises that are supposed to help…PLEASE HELP!)  We have the 350^th hash next week and I already know I can neither run nor walk.  Pisses the hell out of me.

And then the end of the week was my dada Lydia’s funeral.  This was tough for a number of reasons.  First of all, in early years, women had very little opportunity to be together without their husbands, and God forbid if they were single.  We started our group in maybe 2005 because we liked each other and thought that it could be fun to have a friendship with the whole group of “aging women” without our husbands at some different places and that while we were very strong, we could talk about stuff other than work.  That is hard to do in an environment in which many of us care for dying or very sick people every day, but we managed to do it.  We have had a wonderful time sharing our stories,she sure that she could and my daughter Chrissy being perfect mother daughter's, and refusing to offer me Lillian because I had been such a failure at finding Chrissy a husband (Lillian has refused many offers as well.)

 

My daughter Lydia said continually!

 When our Dada Lydia died, and seemingly so suddenly, it devastated us all.  All of us had lost parents and even grandchildren, and even children, but somehow her loss was acute and visceral.  Lydia was our Queen.   

Lydia protecting the mother and chlidren for their new home.

Dadas night choosing our food from Mkulima

Lydia and dadas welcoming visitors to KIWAKKUKI

Lydia with me and our "matching Masai outfits and Dada Very Nice..and ?  ou I was so short Lydia tall.

Bad dinner but fabulous company at Sal Salinaro...Dadas forever!

Lydia is #3 from the left.  We think we are leaving for good, Sept. 2008.  wow.

Ah, Lui and Lydia at I think Lui's birthday.  So beautiful and sweet.

Anyone remember the boat? ABC's she was the queen of that teaching.

Another Dada night.  So proper my Lydia

Study Coordinator Julia in 2006-7 with Eunice and Lydia.  We allowed her to be a Dada even though she was too young.

The most contentious house warming I ever witnessed, but someone approved, &two rabbits the reward.A surprised Lydia.

So many pictures of my Queen and friend.  This is one of the wonderful ones.

Lydia ready for outreach and reports for "Life and Living" "Cives Mundi". Never afraid to go out to the community for a new and good project.  That was Lydia.!

Save the best for last.Lydia was never afraid to teach AIDS education, and here she is in AFREEKA giving a proper condom demonstration, in public.  She was never afraid.  Our Dadas were blown away by this.

One of my favorite captions..Lydia and my sweet Agnes are waiting for John to cross the finish line & we were soon to be in the Majira newspaper for this race. One of my best memories.

She was at least the ex facto wife of the Chief Maralles, and she was wise and smart and could be very sharp (kali) when she needed to be. She was also the most fit of all of us, so the stunning effect of how cancer can take any of us was also difficult.

But once again we rose to the occasion.   

Dadas

We were all there, We all wore the same Kanga which was Dunia Ni Mapito, which the best I can tell means “ the world is our path, or the path”. Our moto has always been “Together we can accomplish everything” Pamoja tunaweza kukamilisha kila kitu! So this was a good kanga for us all to wear. I was unprepared for this service. I am always unprepared for these sorts of things. Sometimes I start crying at regular communion services, and of course I had just met my Dadas for the first time since I returned. It appeared that at least several of the Dadas had been out of town and had not seen one another, but one thing they had done was to visit Lydia. They brought her vegetables (that she couldn’t eat) and broth and soup. They helped her wonderful daughter Lillian who moved essentially from her flat to the house to care for her mother who would not go to the doctor or hospital (I stilll cannot understand this) . and they tried to arrange for someone to go everyday.

My Lydia was not only my Queen, but while I helped her to write her program reports (she refused to learn to type), she taught me about life. Though she was the “wife” of the eventual Chagga King, she never failed to grab her posters, and pencils and head out to the rural areas of Kilimanjaro to teach school cihildren about AIDS and prevention. Nor did she fail at orphan house openings to admonish villages to take care of vulnerable children or women, even sometimes at her own peril. Not once did I see her back down.

She did not understand corruption. This also surprised me because she had become part of a family that has a certain reputation. She was fearless. I have never seen how she faced down men trying to take the house of an orphan child, or people who simply did not believe her AIDS education outreaches. With virtually no training she understood the Adult learning methods, but she also could manage to get Primary 5-6 and Secondary 1-2-3-girls to talk. I always found this amazing but she just found it a way of life. She did a project with TAWREF where she sat and listened to how many words mothers talked to their babies in poor homes. They never saw her as an outsider because that was the way that Lydia was.

Lydia’s funeral and burial were packed with people. I will not say that I wonder where they were when she was alone, but I wil say that I wish we had come back 3 weeks earlier so that I could hold her hand...At the least.


This blog is too long, but it has been an emotional week