So looking back at my blog (because some knob made a comment that I wish I could erase) – so much for 1 year sabbatical. Now going on 11 years, having traveled, worked and lived in Burkina, Ghana, Mali, Ivory Coast, Niger, DR Congo, and now Central African Republic, it's been a lot. A French man I knew in Burkina said once "I've lived here 27 years, but it's Africa so it counts twice". Certainly, by now I can barely remember what it's like to live full-time in Canada, though I've visited a half dozen times in the last decade. I don't remember living there other than small snippets – someone mowing the lawn at 8am on Sat morning in front of my parents' house as a teen, setting my entire house in Ottawa to wake up at 6am so I could get out of the house on time in the winter (coffee maker, house thermostat so hot that I had to get out of bed, even a timer on my lights so the lights were on before my alarm went off.). I remember the last winter I lived there, shoveling snow piles taller than me to clear my drive way (and Ben sliding off them nearly getting run over by a car in the process). I remember commuting being the bane of my existence as Environment Canada moved me 3 times, further and further away from the house I bought 8 min from the original office, til my last commute was nearly an hour away and I had to move my car every hour because there was only street parking, and no transit.

Here it's chickens and guinea fowl at 5am, instead of lawn mowers. The heat, the dust, power and water cuts, crappy internet, and things of poor quality and varying states of disrepair. Where I am now, it's warthogs and hyenas blocking my path to the office, and baboons trying to stick their hands in the windows to steal whatever is on the counter. And trees and fresh air, as the nearest source of air or noise pollution is our diesel generator and 3 planes+helicopter 500m away, and after that about 700km to anything like air pollution.

I haven't written anything in nearly 2 years since we arrived in Garamba National Park working for African Parks Network. Which I suppose is shorter than the nothing I wrote between May 2015 and May 2018. It was a truly difficult and hard to explain time so I didn't bother. Starting with contracts not working out, not having work and needing to re-invent myself, all the terror attacks, coup d'etat, Ben going away to school, becoming a business consultant, and just as I was getting traction on that, the offer to work in DR Congo which was terrifying at first, then just difficult.

It's been a remarkable experience overall but over time became more difficult to explain. As we stumbled from one traumatic or challenging experience to the next, I just ran out of resources and strength, and words. Gratefully, I have loads of friends who are powerhouses of faith and courage and motivation to help me along, and remind me of the person I want to be.

So if you want to see where I am, go to Google Maps and type in Kocho International Airport. You'll see green. Just green. It's not a mistake, you just need to pan way out to see where I am. There is a town nearby called Obo which is considered to be the geographic center of Africa – the point the farthest from the ocean in any direction.

I will eventually post photos of Chinko. I've been here since August 2019 and it looks like they will renew our contracts so we'll see.