Things That Took My Breath Away This Weekend

- wheezing my way up a mountain (while my guide hopped from rock to rock without breaking a sweat).
- walking along red dirt roads, past sun-dappled coffee farms and bleating herds of goats (all the while having a serious T.I.A.* moment).
- watching eight-year-old girls carry enormous bags of rice.
On their heads.
Uphill.
Wait, no: UPMOUNTAIN.
- being attacked by fire ants in the jungle (literally, ants in my pants).
- wading through a stream, wondering about the possibility of schistosomiasis.
- standing at the bottom of a pounding waterfall, on the side of a mountain, in a place I've dreamed about for most of my life, feeling honored to be alive.
- attending a celebration that, in short, was the traditional Maasai equivalent of a dance party.
- drinking extremely potent locally brewed beer made from fermented bananas and wheat. Enough said.
- being proposed to by a sixty-year-old Maasai man.
- being accidentally spit on by the same overly enthusiastic, mostly toothless Maasai man.
- being told by a group of children that my "face shines like candlelight."


God I love this place.



*T.I.A. = this is Africa. A saying reserved only for the most awe-inspiring, heart-wrenching, visually arresting, quintessentially African moments.