HAPPY SURPRISES I made a deal with our tour leader: “If I’m not there for an outing, don’t wait longer than 10 minutes. I will never not be okay. There’s no trouble I can get into that I can’t get out of. I will never be late for a ferry, yacht, bus, or plane. Rest…
Map from Virtual Explorers (http://www.virtualexplorers.org/ghana/map.htm). Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, my West African speech gave way to my Midwestern speech. I am going home…to my ancestral home, the place of my father awaits, heart beating as promised, and the place of our foremothers and forefathers. This December homecoming pilgrimage to Ghana has been a thorough-going…
Marcelline (Marcy) Burns is an author-friend I made through her response to “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” and continued penpal correspondence with both my father and myself. She is one of my role models I use when answering the question, “What kind of old woman do I want to be?” This was a question posed to…
Click here to read the entirety of Swick’s find essay “Photo book can reveal places, but not experiences there.” Journeys don’t spare us; they drag us through the raw on our way to the sublime. –Thomas Swick, travel editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
II. Africa Maun, Botswana Afternoons, I teach schoolchildren to swim in the flooded waters of the Tamalakane. Two fingers support wiry bodies that sink every chance they get. “Arch your back! Spread out your limbs! Float! Kick! Paddle!” Until one student travels under her own speed. We collapse on the bank, gasping with sputtered water…