Worlds Apart?

Africa.

How do you reconcile two places that are on opposite ends of the world? How do you hold on to memories without forgetting? How do you let Africa impact your life when you're living in Canada?

We've been home for almost two weeks now and are already finding ourselves back into the "normal routines" of home life; routines we haven't had for 4 months. There are groceries to buy, repairs to do on the house, work to start again...and it's amazing how easy it is to slip back into these routines. It's easy to forget the places where there are only markets to buy food, or gardens to grow it; where repairs on houses means putting more straw on the top of your roof to stop the leak in your mud house; or where you're lucky if you have a job to do that will help you to provide for yourself or your family.

The lessons we have learned in Africa are lessons I think we will continue to learn throughout our lives. Although the fear is forgetting, Africa has made an impression on us that will be lasting, it has changed us. In many ways it will be impossible to forget.

We have seen the smiles of joy from children living in slums. We have seen the broken lives of orphans in Burundi. We have seen poverty, riches, and corruption. We have seen evil manifested in the demon possessed, in alcohol, in anger, and in poverty. We have seen many helping hands and kind hearts. We have seen spiritual revival in Uganda and Zambia. We have seen darkness and hardness in Mauritania. We have seen desert, and streams; hope and despair; poverty and riches; christian and muslim; black and white. We have seen people fighting for survival, for hope, for love, for a future.

Are we really so different here in North America? In some ways we are worlds apart and in other ways we are much the same. We are on different continents, but the same earth, we have different resources, but the same needs. The same sun rises and falls here as in Africa, the same rains come from the same clouds. The same God created us as them. The same Saviour came to save.

Africa, we won't forget you.

Home at last!

our last meal in africa...we didn't know what the "house special burger" was going to be.

He're I am, sitting in my living room, on a laptop with a fast internet connection. In fact, in the time it took me to write the second sentance that stupid picture of me loaded. Already it's apparent that we live in a very different world.

I'm not planning to write much right now, we're still strying to catch our breath a bit. But we just wanted to let you all know that we made it home safely. Everything went well, other than a 2.5 hr delay at Ohare, but I guess that's what you get the day after 500 flights are cancelled. Luckily we didn't fly home one day sooner.

We'll make sure we give some sort of reflection on here, so watch for that. It's sad that B&E's African Adeventures have come to an end...but we plan to have plenty of "real life" adventures on tap.

Talk to you all soon.

Homeward Bound!

Wow....I think that's all I can say. It's so hard to believe that our trip is over. After today we'll be back in the Northern Hemisphere; away from everything Africa. Am I excited to come home? Yes. Is Brian excited to come home? Yes!!!!!

Although I'm excited, I have to admit, now that the realities of leaving are sinking in, I'm quite a bit disappointed. I think Africa has really become a part of us over the last 4 months. This trip has changed us. I'm just a bit scared that by leaving here we will be leaving those "changes" behind. Africa and North America are 2 really different worlds. I think it's going to be interesting in our next few weeks, bringing those worlds together. We've got a lot of processing to do.

Anyway, we're really excited to see you all when we come home!

Wow!

Last Days!

Well folks, time is running out. Our trip is coming to a close... and we're excited! We've had an amazing time, but we are really looking forward to coming home. There are so many things we miss. Our families, our friends, our church, our home, our bikes, our bed, our food, our bikes, our food, oh yeah and family and friends too. Basically we miss home and everything that has to do with that. We're counting down the days now. It's Monday night here now and we leave on Thursday morning. So only two more days to kill now.

So what have we been doing to kill our time? Most of the things would make an amazing holiday that you wouldn't want to end... but we've been on holidays for 4 months now, and we don't really need a break from anything, so the time is going quite slowly. But we've been passing it by reading, lounging by the pool and on the beach, swimming, surfing, playing ping-pong and v-ball with each other and some of the friends we've made here. We've also been going for long walks on the beach (that sounds romantic eh?) and continuing to explore the aquatic life we find. We've played with hermit crabs and other big crabs, and we're also lucky to see dolphins jumping out in the ocean today.

Much of the same is on tap for the next two days. Right now it's off to see if I can regain the ping-pong title against this young lady beside me. She swept everyone today. She's made a few guys thirsty for revenge!

this is our favorite dog here. Xena is lazy beyond belief. Other than the shower, her favorite spot is beside the volleyball court. She know where the action is, even if she's not in it!

A Rainy Day in Cintsa

Well, we're back in blog and email action. And....it's a cold, rainy day....what better way to spend some time than updating everyone on our Cintsa adventures.

I was going to tell you that we were surfing and encountered 5 sharks, and fended them off with our surf boards, just to spice up the blog a bit.....but that never happened....

Anyway, surf's up and so are the Rowaans. After 5 days of surfing I'm standing on the board and even riding the waves a bit. I'm definitely not up to Brian's surfing level, but I'm working on it. I've realized that surfing is a lot of hard work, and we should be able to burn off the grilled cheese that we're having for lunch.

Although we've been doing mostly our own cooking, we took part in the Indian dinner party here on Tuesday night. They really did it up with candles, a two course dinner, including desert. It was excellent food and a lot of fun. Tonight we're going to take part in the Braii....the South African equivalent of a BBQ. We're having lamb, chicken and brotworst. They really like their meat here!

When we need a bit of a break from surfing, we have created what we call our "crab ecosystem". Basically we collect a bunch of little hermit crabs, find some empty shells and hope that we'll see them switching shells. It's actually quite interesting and we've even seen a shell switch!

It's hard to believe but our days here are almost over. We've got exactly one week left in Africa before we begin our 4 flight trip home. It's going to be some long flights, but we're getting really excited to come home...to the snow!

Email Trouble

Hi folks. We're still doing great but are having trouble with our email. This computer won't allow us to send messages. So bear with us, we can't use yahoo!.

I need you, Mom Rowaan, to do me a favour. Could you please email a man by the name of Terry. He's a beekeeper in Alberta. Just let him know I have no email so that's why you're writing him and tell him I don't want any packages from NZ. Ask him to send the check back to me. Let him know I'll contact him as soon as I can. Thanks a lot mom. His email address is terry@highriver.net.

To the rest of you, you'll have to be patient with us. Sorry.

talk to you all soon

Surf's Up!!

Yes were still alive! Sorry we haven't updated you all as to what's been up for the last few days.

We drove took two days to drive from Cape Town to tiny Cintsa, where we arrived at our amazing backpackers for the last leg of our trip. What a place. We think we told you to check it out at Cintsa.com and you should. This place is awesome; as good as the website says it is, or better.

We right on the beach and have an amazing view from our "safari tent", which is a big tent with a bed in it. Yesterday we didn't do much after we arrived accept, play in the surf with some boogie boards. But today the surfing began. We decided to take a short lesson this morning. It's been a while for me and Erin is new to "hanging ten" so we thought it would be a good plan. We had a blast! The wind was really blowing today, so the ocean was like a washing machine, but I managed to regain a little of my form from New Zealand and Erin will be a pro by the time we leave. So she can meet one of her goals of the trip. She did great! No sharks though! Maybe tomorrow.

This afternoon the African adventures continued. We decided to take part in the free activity which they offer everyday here. Today it was a "booze cruise". It's not as bad as it sounds. It's basically just a sunset trip on a little boat up the river here, in which they serve you some wine. It started out great, until we noticed a few leaks in the boat. We decided we'd pull over and sit on some rocks and watch the sun set, so that the boat wouldn't fill up with too much water and make it difficult for us to return to camp. Well, when we did get back in the boat it filled up even quicker than before, and before long, myself and two other guys were in the water pushing the boat and attemping to lighten the load, while the ladies kept high and dry, save their feet and eventually their knees. The boat filled right full and we had to drag it to shore and empty it. Everyone walked back except for another guy and I. We stayed on board just in case we had to push again. We made it all the way back, but when we got within 5 metres of shore, the entire outboard motor fell right off the back of the boat and we had to fish it out. Luckily it was only a light 5 horse, but it'll need to be taken apart before the next cruise; and I imagine they'll need to fix the boat as well.

The next two weeks promise to be quite busy for us. We'll need to surf everyday, laze on the secluded beach, rub suntan oil on ourselves, and play beach volleyball. I hope we can handle it. We've heard lots of stories from you about the big snow storm with school closers and all. We're actually a bit jealous. We both love a good snow storm.

Just try to think of how much we miss it as you shovel out the driveway!