Back in Drammen after a twelve day road trip to Ålesund for Andre and Elise's wedding, then Røros and finally Hafjell, where we slept in a tent the night before visiting Lilleputthammer (tons of fun!). Kids are in the barnehage today and I just talked to my principal, who gave me some good news.
The new avdelingsleder is the person who has done job in my stead this year, and he's exactly who I hoped would get the position. Even better is that we've gotten a new Spanish teacher (originally from Cuzco now living with her family in Lier) and we'll be able to collaborate together next year. Wonderful synchronicity that I got my start as a Spanish teacher through my sister's host family in Peru, and now I can grow the Spanish program even more at my school with this Peruvian woman married to a Norwegian. She's obviously got her heart in the right place, having arranged a Christmas chocolate party for two towns in the Andes in December of 2008. I anticipate that she will be totally on board with my Berkeley-inspired curriculum choices of El Norte and La Otra Conquista, and I very much look forward to her contributions.
Another wonderful surprise was in my inbox this morning: an email from my ndugu Zebedayo from Tanzania, from whom I hadn't heard in two years. I was starting to wonder if I'd ever hear from him again, or whether I would even be able to find out if he were to pass away, now or in the future. Infant mortality has struck his family yet again - another boy lost to spina bifida (they lost their first to pneumonia). Fortunately their second-born, Alpha, is healthy and will be starting school this year. Apparently he enjoys singing, which is perfect because I remember so well the singing from the Easter retreat with Zebedayo in Ifunda in 2009, near his home village of Ihemi. Both the thousand-youth strong choir and the Tanzanian head dance, but also Kambako and Zebedayo singing "Shetani na Mungu..." as we walked out in the early morning mist to choose a cow to slaughter for the feast.
Indelible memories from a land so far away, almost ten years ago but still as vivid as if they had happened yesterday. Crazy to think that the malaria I contracted there might be the cause of my glioblastoma. So I wrote back to him in Swahili, thinking hard to remember verbs like 'to finish' (kumaliza) and was able to describe my epileptic seizure and subsequent treatment: essential information for him (and brushing up of Swahili for me) before we talk this week.
On the subject of my diagnosis, I found out that a friend's wife's mother has three brain tumors - glioblastoma - and they are inoperable. She's seventy years old and has already survived breast cancer; now the doctors are giving her less than a year. Tragic and unfair, but at least she's reached the seven-decade mark: almost twice as long as I have lived.
So here I sit on my couch with the panorama doors wide open, breeze blowing in, forest and river and fjord and the cityscape beneath me, grateful to be alive, feeling vigorous, with so many wonderful moments still to come in my life.
