HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CAMILLE!
Fifty-eight years on the planet still somewhat puzzled by this thing called life but smiling nevertheless.
FROM ASHEVILLE, WITH LOVE
The sun shines brighter when Amy and Garth are in town. We were very happy that they drove in from Asheville with brother Adam to spend a couple of days at Trouts Farm.
FAMILY WEEKEND
Shane’s family and Amy and Garth were all in town for a sort of mini-family reunion down here in beautiful Moncure. More photos: Last Days in Moncure
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Our hibiscus bloomed this year for the first time because this year the deer didn’t get to it first. Speaking of deer, the neighborhood consensus was that this mysterious dropping found near our laundry line one morning came from a young deer which has been gorging on Jason and Haruka’s succulent fresh vegetables.
PREPARATIONS
In an exciting turn of events, Bob decided to take an assignment in Africa for a year. Getting our visas proved to be problematic, especially when Camille’s passport failed to make it back from the Ghanian Embassy in Washington DC. Fortunately, our good friend Frankie was willing and able to spend three days chasing it down. This is the picture he took of the window opening on his first day of the search
Houseplants were another loose end until our wonderful neighbor Janice volunteered to take them all. We quickly loaded them into Christine for the ride around the corner before she could change her mind.
TRAVEL DAY
The big day finally arrived and we headed off well before dawn with neighbors Jason and Haruka. More photos from our trip to Africa here: Flying to Ethiopia and Beyond
ACCRA
We enjoyed a couple of days in Accra and rediscovered our taste for mangoes. See more pictures of Accra at: A Couple of Days in Accra
KUMASI
On to Kumasi where we’ll be living for the next year. Bob and Jeremy practice carrying water jugs on their heads. Lauren, Camille and Louis joined Jeremy in a trip to the circus. Check out more on this story here: Our First Week in Kumasi
MAKING OURSELVES AT HOME
Finally, we were able to put our bags at their final destination. A spacious home on Dr. J. G. Wood Lane full of groovy people including our friend Jeremy, Lauren and Louis. For more photos of our new surroundings, please visit: Our New Home
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THIS MONTH’S QUOTE:
“They had come to Africa on the assumption that by moving to a new world they would leave their problems behind and find a place where there were no such problems and no such hindrances. They seemed to have had no inkling that human beings, whether they liked it or not, carried their problems about with them wherever they went.
So in their three hundred and twenty years of a new life, even in the Africa of their promise, when this craving for a better way of being seemed thwarted, they had again and again renounced homes and possessions just as readily as any in Europe and moved deeper into the interior, looking once more for a place where their problems would not exist, where life would be innocent like a slate wiped clean, and they could write all over it perfect phrases and sentences of the perfect life on earth. They had of course found no such thing. They had not only not found it but had gradually begun to create a greater form of tyranny than they had opposed and fled from in the beginning, so unaware were they of the new heresy of believing in places where evil did not exist. Not only were there no such places in Africa but there were none anywhere else in the world. Man had run out of places, had run out of geographical solutions for his problems and changes of scene as a ‘cure’ for his restlessness. <snip>
The real, the only crisis out of which all evil came was a crisis of meaning. It was the terrible invasion of meaninglessness and a feeling of not belonging invading the awareness of man, that was the unique sickness of our day. And this sickness, he was convinced, was the result of the so-called civilized man, parting company with the natural and instinctive man in himself.” – Laurens van der Post from “A Far Off Place”.
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