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Die for your dreams

A few weeks ago while walking downtown to meet a friend for an afternoon coffee, a stranger asking for directions approached me.  At least, that’s what I thought he wanted. Pulling out an ear bud, I paused and waited for his question.  After a few seconds, he conceded that he didn’t have one – he just ‘thought I was cute’ and that ‘we should chat’.  And so, in spite of the sweltering heat,  two strangers slowed down and quickly uncovered some commonalities. 

Will had come to Toronto from Germany to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, a quest that was currently being conducted from the couch of a friend.  I had just returned to Toronto, fully engaged in a similar quest, based from my brother’s couch.  Both of us had professional degrees, had traveled extensively and were deeply committed to finding a meaningful place in the world.

The day before, Will got a tattoo.  As our conversation progressed, he rotated his forearm to give me a better view.  In gothic script it read ‘die for your dreams’.  Of course this pleased me greatly – not live, but die for your dreams - what verve!

Since our encounter, I’ve thought about these words a lot.  First, the fact that I was sought out by a stranger who had tattooed on his body a message whose essence I have adopted as a mantra reaffirms my strong belief that somehow we are all connected.

Secondly, I’ve been reflecting on the power of such a statement.  It demonstrates a willingness to put all of yourself on the line for something.  I’ve always admired that type of determination and in some ways have been waiting for the ‘something’ that would put me to that test.  That Will, who is still searching for ‘something’, is so unapologetic in his commitment to this search is inspiring.  What does it matter what your dream is? We are all going to die, that is for certain.  But what if in the meantime we all gave ourselves permission to put every ounce of our energy into things that we believe in and that inspire us? What if we died for our dreams?

Let me be the first to acknowledge that living this way would be extremely hard.  In fact, I consider it the challenge of a lifetime.  But I am back in Toronto and working to live up to it, beginning a path filled with uncertainty and requiring me to be more honest, genuine (and, frankly, brave) than I ever have been.  Every morning I wake to a call to action that is inked into a forearm of a kindred spirit somewhere on this planet.  Every other morning it alternates between sounding totally insane and intensely worthwhile.

I started this blog as a way to let those interested in my travel adventures get a sense of where I was going and what I was doing.  Each time I’ve moved overseas, I’ve renewed my commitment to it.  Looking back, it’s clear that although the scenery has changed a lot, the stories have always been about the people and thoughts evoked by the experiences I’ve had rather than about the places themselves.  Luckily, as the random conversation I describe here suggests, those stories happen everywhere, a place where I always am.

Fittingly, I think I am about to embark on my biggest adventure yet.

Black market stamps

In May, I spent a week in Ethiopia. The flight price from Dar to Addis Ababa is almost the same as the flight from Dar to Delhi, so when I realized I could stop over on my return to Dar from India without an extra fee, the decision to visit was easy. 

My expectations were high.  Without exception, everyone I know who has traveled to Ethiopia has raved about it.  An ancient civilization where Orthodox Christians carry out rituals in churches that have stood for almost a thousand years, the professed home of the Arc of the Covenant and the birthplace of coffee, what isn’t there to love?  Perhaps it was because I had just come from India, or because my expectations were so high, but my trip was not easy.  I know that many of my stories on this blog recount awesome times on the road.  Quite honestly, most of my travel experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, many things during my short stay in Ethiopia were remarkable.  But as we all know, nothing can be perfect, not everything works and sometimes what we expect to be enjoyable isn’t.  So here’s my authentic accounting of my northern circuit trip: Axum, Gonder and Lalibela.

Traveling as a single woman has some advantages.   Besides the luxury of doing exactly what you want, being alone makes it far easier to make connections with new people.  But it also makes some things more difficult.  For example, in conservative societies, local women are almost entirely absent from daily life.  Even in non-conservative places, since women are usually charged with maintaining their households, they are frequently behind the scenes.  This means that streets are often filled with idle and leering young men, seeking any number of things.  Some are innocuous, like employment as a guide or information about your home country, while others are less so, anticipating encounters with what they perceive are loose and lonely Western women.  Usually they can be dissuaded by avoiding eye contact or a terse response and seldom does their presence invoke actual cause for alarm.  But when every corner, storefront and restaurant echoes with their exhortations, it becomes frustrating and exhausting.  Unfortunately, this was my experience in several of the towns I visited in Northern Ethiopia.

So while I visited places that bore witness to an ancient, powerful and undeniably sophisticated African civilization, I seldom escaped constant haranguing.  When I arrive somewhere new, I like to walk around, keeping an eye out for landmarks (I’m directionally-challenged) and interesting food stalls while taking in what the people on the streets are doing.  The joy of wandering was sapped as I struggled to adjust to the idea that my every movement required chaperoning, even though I recognized that most only sought to help me.  Having spent most of my time in India in an area catering to tourists, I also had forgotten one of my key travel strategies: accepting I cannot understand many nuances of the culture around me and choosing my objections wisely.  As a consequence, daily transactions became more frustrating than necessary.  Lapsing yet again one morning, I asked the clerk at the airport gift shop why I was charged 40% over the face value of the stamps I purchased.  Her response: ‘they are black market stamps’.  At the airport.  Remembering my rule, I dutifully returned to my seat, recognizing the futility of the obvious follow up questions and eager for the arrival of my flight, which was already 4 hours late.

I began and ended my trip in Addis and thankfully, my experience there was much different.  My arrival was a homecoming to the continent and a reminder of the staggering beauty of Eastern Africa.  Walking along the streets, I was repeatedly mistaken for Habesha (Ethiopian) and rarely approached. My final night was spent having dinner with an American couple living in Addis who I’d met in Gonder and who had generously invited me into their home.  

And so, while I was genuinely relieved to leave Ethiopia, I wholeheartedly recommend visiting it.  Why? First, because as my experience and those of my friends suggest, everyone experiences a place differently.  And because it reminded me of the rewards of the effort of traveling in a difficult place.  Now, long after my irritation has subsided, I still can still conjure the memory of cool morning air penetrating the white shrouds of hundreds at a rock-hewn church in Lalibela.  I can taste the bittersweet heat of berbere (a local spice) and feel the welcome of the teacher who asked me the time in Amharic and ended up buying me a macchiato.  The pages of my journal capture lunch with a restaurant proprietress who had an extended, translated conversation with me about the nature of love in response to her daughter’s question ‘how do you know?’ Human brains are hardwired to remember the best experiences and I’m thankful for that -- these are memories worth keeping.

Open windows

Increasingly I prefer walking around to the prescribed stops in guidebooks.  This is only partly because I’ve begun to schedule many outings around the delicious things that I plan to eat.  In an earlier post, I wrote about how the extensive Swahili greetings reflect a cultural concern for the well being of both the individual and the community.   Much like language, I think that street life can give you glimpses into a national psyche.  What people are doing on the streets is a clue about what is important to the people who live there.

This idea came to me over and over again during my recent trip to the Netherlands.  First, it seemed like every street was home to buildings from the seventeenth century.  And most of these buildings were in use.  How could I tell? Because almost every building, new and old, had an expansive picture window, all unfailingly showcasing the contents of the building.  Faux finished metallic vases with stark white flowers and blue and white china patterns were the most common window ledge decorations, with the occasional serene Buddha head or potted orange plant breaking up the clean lines.  Astonishingly, most residential dwellings were on full display – immaculate sitting rooms and kitchens, with views clear through to matching picture windows at the back of their homes.  Literally, people had put their lives on display. 

My naturally curious inclination adjusted quickly to this voyeurism – how do people live in such an organized and stylish way?  Does everyone live this way?  Arriving on a Wednesday, I grew accustomed to glimpsing into each home that I passed.    Each was the starting point for a storyline: the young family whose daughter was obsessed with pink princesses, the epicure with an addiction to stylish multi-coloured kitchen gadgets, the wholesome couple meeting each evening over a sturdy reclaimed wood kitchen table.  Soon I came to believe they wanted me to look in their windows, to speculate about who and what they were.   

And so I obliged – until Saturday rolled around.  My gaze suddenly began to meet the eyes of the people living in these pristine homes.  Unfailingly, I was the one who always looked away, embarrassed to catch them spending time with their families or reading their newspapers and drinking coffee.  No one seemed concerned that their daily activities were essentially a form of street theatre.  I was floored when my friend and guide pointed out that some homes have what is essentially a rear-view mirror mounted outside, so that the goings on of the street can be viewed from the comfort of one’s living room – two independent dramas, each being witnessed by the opposite party.

I couldn’t help but wonder about the significance of this.  In North America, we build fences and draw our shutters and even the famous beg for their privacy.  I acknowledge that it would be foolhardy to make any meaningful conclusions about an entire culture after only six days.  But maybe there is a connection between the liberal attitudes that the Netherlands is known for and its ubiquitous open windows.  The sacredness of privacy reduced in exchange for the opportunity to sate a basic human curiosity about each other’s banal daily lives.  Does this duality of being both the performer and the spectator result in being satisfied by seeing some and not all?  Does it foster a cultural sentiment of living and letting live?

And so, a trip that I intended to be defined by a visit to a dear friend and copious amounts of beer and cheese inevitably became yet another about the ideas of living.

Grace

Bir colony is a one-street town.   Each day I spent there, I walked down this main street – in search of biscuits, internet and exercise (relating to the biscuits).  One day I ventured almost all the way down the street with a new friend, only to have my flip-flops give out before we reached the café.  Fiona led me to a shoemaker she knew, who deftly threaded some thick twine through the plastic of my shoe, making two minutes work of the task.  Thrilled, I asked the man, dusty and crouching over his kit, how much I owed him for the repair.  His answer? Nothing.  In fact, he refused all of my attempts at compensating him for his skill.

Leaving his shop and all through the day I was humbled by this.  Here was a man who had far less than I did, who was insistent on doing me a favour.  The fee for his task would be less than I would spend on a snack, but would have far greater utility for him.  Hailing from a place where every skill is a tradable commodity, it felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable to be given something by a complete stranger.  Searching for the best way to describe this, I came up with grace.  Grace embodies the spirit that gives without expectation of return, without reference to economic disparity and is instead inspired by the commonality of human experiences.

Days later in Delhi, I was struck again by this spirit.  Planning to pay for my day room by credit card, two failed attempts at my PIN had brought me within one try of not having access to any money.  Frantic, I tried to call the bank using the guest computers.  However, despite being loaded with Skype and equipped with earphones, the computer microphones were not registering my voice.  My 3am international flight loomed in the distance.  Desperate, I asked them to swipe my card instead.  Remarkably, this was successful and at last I was ready to load my things into the waiting taxi.  The staff, witnessing the meteoric rise of my blood pressure, reassured me that everything would be alright.  As if to bolster this assertion, they presented me with a Pepsi and a large bottle of water to take on my way.  The day had been filed with touts and pushy young men on the sweltering streets of Delhi but on my way to the airport, as I watched the lights of the city block out the stars with their flickering, it was once again inescapable: grace.

If you have trouble sleeping.... (and other pieces of wisdom)

Every morning of my yoga course began with pranayama.  The theory goes something like this – energy, prana, flows throughout our bodies all of the time.  Learning to control the energy, pranayama, is one way of quieting the mind towards the ultimate goal: becoming free of the mind.  The easiest way for us to do this is to manipulate our breath and so each day we undertook a series of exercises towards this end.

Brahmari is one of these exercises.  To do it, you exhale and emit a high pitched hum while covering your eyes and plugging your ears.  Apparently it is excellent if you are having trouble sleeping.  A skeptic at heart, I was bemused by an image of attempting this while in the company of an unsuspecting roommate and wondered if the basis of the theory was transference of sleeplessness.  I kept my comments to myself and kept up the daily practice, but as you can imagine, I did not take it to heart.

This week, after a heated conversation with my rogue gym back in Canada, I lay wide awake in my room, watching the lights of the guesthouse across the stairs flicker and cast shadows against the cold concrete walls.  Not once did bhramari come to my mind.  Instead, I eventually fell into a fitful sleep, amid vows to write a scathing letter.

The next morning at pranayama, my teacher, Vijay, who has a tendency to lapse into winding explanations and side stores, started to talk about bhramari.  I listened to him with good-humoured fascination, wondering what digression would overtake his train of thought.  He started by talking about the pitch of our humming, mentioning something about sounding like a male bee on an inhale and female bee on an exhale.  Contemplating this absurdity, I almost missed the valuable part.  Vijay said that when doing this practice, it is good to chant the name of your god over and over at the same time.  Illustrating one of his best qualities, his lack of dogma, he followed this comment with ‘If you don’t believe in god, repeat ‘for every problem, there is a solution’.  For every problem, there is a solution.  Humming or not, I know repeating this after my argument would have lulled me to sleep much faster than the dancing shadows.

If you are listening and open to it, wisdom like Vijay’s is abundant.  Now that my teacher training is finished, I am taking advantage of the many learning opportunities here in McLeod Ganj.  Each of he last four mornings I have climbed the steep hill into neighbouring Dharmkot to take an excellent Iyengar yoga course at the Himalayan Yoga Institute.  Each morning, in what I am beginning to suspect is typical guru fashion, the founder of the centre, Sharat, comes in and offers us some advice.  Yesterday he said ‘it is important to follow technique so that you can get to your ultimate destination: freedom’.  And then, with a smile, he left.  In our specific cases, he meant ground your feet and stretch your toes so that you do the pose right, and if you do the pose right, you can move towards the point of doing it in the first place.  Extrapolating from this idea, might go something like this: be mindful because paying attention to the subtleties of your actions can expand your experience of them.

Continuing to challenge my perceptions, foot alignment in the morning led to energy alignment in the afternoon.  Friends of mine have done levels of Reiki, or energy healing, with a man who owns a crystal shop five minutes from my guesthouse.  Encouraged by their rave reviews and the spirit of experimentation I lay down on a green cushion in a room lined with rows of pashminas.  The afternoon heat was amplified by the cramped dimensions of the room and the chaotic noise from the street below, as vacationers and taxis honked insults at each other on roads never meant for cars.  When Jakob began by placing his hands on my back, I felt smothered by yet another source of heat and wondered just how long an hour could feel.  Turns out not that long, as about three minutes later I fell asleep.  Bewildered that an hour had passed, I asked Jakob what I should have been feeling.  His response went something like this: ‘Reiki heals the energy imbalances in your body by removing blockages.  Everyone experiences this differently and you’ll be able to tell because you will feel different over the coming days’.  In other words, he pressed his hands on me for an hour, without a specific ailment to address or anticipated outcome.  Still, his price of ‘pay what you feel’ was hard to argue with, and didn’t Vijay say that for every problem there is a solution? Surely that applies to unknown ones?  He assured me ‘if it works, you will be back’.

That was just yesterday.  And I did feel different afterwards, eating lunch without the crutches of a novel, notebook or computer – watching people arrive and leave, select knitwear being stitched by Tibetan grandmas and children dance around an ice cream vendor.  It wasn’t the watching so much as the fact that my mind was clear – no worries about what I hadn’t done or needed to do, just quiet.  Afterwards, as I wrote emails and met with friends, I tried to hold onto that.  I awoke this morning still feeling light.  It might have been the Reiki, or the 30 minutes of back bends I did in my morning yoga class or something else entirely, but does it matter?  Remarking on theories about the tension that the body stores and my curiosity about why my hips are so tight, a friend of mine said something similar – why does it matter why it’s there? Just release it and move on.

So today I tried to do exactly that.  Willing the feeling to continue, I climbed the 200 stairs to the main road, ate a small breakfast and went up the hill to Dharmkot once more.  Demonstrating how to engage our shoulders in a pose, my teacher, Leo, said, ‘Read what you want, study under as many teachers as you need, but the important thing is to experience what you are learning.  Then you will know what is true for you.’  Well said, Leo, well said.  Let’s see what that is.

Kicking my asana

It’s hard to believe that it has already been two weeks since my last post and three since my course started.  As my title suggests, my time in Dharmshala has been intense!

I’m studying to become a certified Vinyasa Flow teacher.  This means that for six days a week, between the hours of 7am and 7pm I am engaged in some form of yoga practice: breathing (pranayama), posture classes like the Ashtanga Primary Series (asana), anatomy, chanting and philosophy.  During the breaks in between classes I’m usually either eating something with too high a sugar content (sigh) or attempting to organize my notes in a pretty blue tome that I’ve purchased for that purpose.  Then it’s dinner, a little more note review and bed.

As a consequence I have had little time to explore McLeod Ganj and the neighbouring cities in the valley.  For the most part, my understanding of the city revolves around where my next meal will take place.   Hopefully when the course finishes I’ll be able to fill in some of the many gaps, and maybe even write about it.

In the meantime, let me share with you a bit about what I have been experiencing: yoga and people.  I start my philosophy class on Tuesday, but as a preliminary, beyond some supple bodies in spandex, yoga is a way of life.  An eightfold path, the asana classes that are punishing my body are only one part of a series of practices that are aimed at controlling and stilling one’s mind.  In fact, asana is only stage three on this path, so it’s fitting that the other concept that I can relate my current experiences to is an aspect of the second step, niyama, which sets out certain disciplines to govern our actions and our attitude towards ourselves.

Much of my free time is spent either with others in my class or with people who are attending our morning Ashtanga or evening Hatha classes.  We talk about our lives, relationships and work experiences and through that I’ve been exposed to more alternative ways of living than at any other point in my life.  How so? Well first of all, I’m one of the easiest people to characterize: “former lawyer”.  That can be said in a sentence and well understood.  Most people knew ‘my deal’ in the first week.  But what everyone else does ‘for a living’ has tended to come out more slowly, over the course of many conversations.  Why? because very few of the people are doing things that fit easily into a category.  In fact, I would say that most of them are mainly occupied with ‘living’, as opposed to ‘doing’.

Let me explain.  Almost everyone I’ve met and spent time with ‘works’ between four and six months of a year.  They build stadium roofs, herd cows and make cheese, do farm labour and so on.  Then they take the rest of the year to follow their own pursuits: yoga, travel, religious study, you name it.  Those that ‘work’ full time do many things – create art, design hats, coach others through transitions and practice alternative healing.  Most of these combinations of pursuits have never occurred to me.   But for those who have undertaken them, they work.  The freedom they’ve chosen in exchange for a category is a trade they are happy to have made, and in that happiness they reflect contentment with their lives and where they are at.

Reading one of my books today, I came across santosha, the second of the niyamas that I refer to above, and my encounters with these new friends came to mind.  From my limited understanding, santosha means something along the lines of being satisfied with what one has, or put another way, not requiring more than one has to achieve contentment.  I have been striving for this for a long time.  My exposure to so many alternative ways of being reminded me that this is part of what underlies my impulse to try on new lives and experiences – to learn of the ways that others arrive at this point of contentment and apply this knowledge to my personal quest.  As we move beyond breathing and postures this week and learn about the deeper philosophy of yoga, I know that I will necessarily begin to shift my attention inward.  But I am glad that in the weeks that preceded this, I have once again had my eyes opened. 

Dar to Dharamshala

A couple of months ago I sat down at my favourite coffee shop and thought, what next?  Absentmindedly I started looking up yoga teaching training programs, thinking ‘wouldn’t it be great if one day…’  And then it struck me, why not now?  And so began another journey, one that has found me sitting in the absolute centre of a wonderful coffee shop overlooking the hills and valleys of Himachal Pradesh.  A journey from Dar to Dharamshala.

Returning to India is a homecoming of sorts.  It is where I set out for in 2010, when I decided to finally see the land of my dreams.  In a happy twist of fate, that trip led me to a land I had never dreamt of but whose colours and landscapes now make up the shape and texture of my dreams.  My parting thought in the Dar airport was ‘not yet’.  Luckily, as I will be returning in June, it isn’t. 

After a five hour layover and a fitful night’s sleep, I landed in a steamy Delhi.  At thirty-seven degrees it felt like Dar, absent the relief of the smooth beaches of the Indian Ocean.  Not ready to engage with the madness of the city, I escaped to an afternoon at my hotel.  The hotel was right next to a mall – so while I mulled over whether to see Titanic 3-D, I slathered body shop products on my already well hydrated skin – affirming that no matter where you go, many realities await you.  Back in the mall for dinner, I ate at a small coffee shop, watching the middle class enjoy their Saturday evening.  Skimming the extensive menu, I came across poutine.  Poutine! Of all things! The description went something like this ‘A Canadian specialty of cheese and gravy on chips, pronounced Fou-tan’.  Foutan, noted.  As much as I miss home, I decided not to have a meal that would leave me both disappointed and with clogged arteries.

The next day I waded out into Delhi, in search of my night bus to Dharamshala.  A painless metro ride was followed by an auto rickshaw ride involving several stops to try to find someone who spoke English while my driver careened aimlessly in search of a location he had not understood.  Luckily I had built in an extra hour for this task.  This meant when I finally made it to the Tibetan colony in Delhi, I still had time to spend a couple hours in the ‘Hard Yak Café’, eating chow mein and talking to the proprietor, whose wife was hoping to get a job working in Canada.  He questioned whether life was actually better in the West, with the high cost of living combined with little concept of relaxation or governing one’s own time and I couldn’t give him a conclusive answer.  After a chat about the merits of freedom, community and modest living, he guided me towards the bus stand – a dusty expanse behind a derelict building and beneath an incomplete highway overpass.  I would have had no idea that there was a bus stop there if it weren’t for a couple perplexed looking people with travel bags.  Immediately a svelte Indian boy who looked about sixteen asked to see my ticket and said I was on his bus.  I hoped he wasn’t the one driving it.  When the bus eventually arrived, they began loading the luggage compartments beneath the bus one at a time.  We all got a start when they opened the middle compartment and there was a body in it – after some yelling and swatting, a groggy young man got up from beneath some blankets.  The sixteen year old suddenly looked like a better prospect.  When we departed, I made a point of not checking who ended up at the wheel.

Kil-ing It – A journey to the top of Africa

After a decade of two degrees, 25 countries and a number of professional incarnations, the question of how to celebrate my thirtieth birthday loomed large.  Work and an unanticipated (though much appreciated) holiday trip home conspired against setting foot in my thirtieth country, so when the stars aligned to climb Kilimanjaro by the light of a full moon during the first hours of my thirtieth, I considered myself lucky to have stumbled upon a sufficiently romantic marker of the date that I had once earmarked as the entry-point into my adulthood.

Living on the shores of the Indian Ocean, our journey began at sea level.  For myself and my climbing partner, our actual departure was a welcome relief following weeks of deciding upon logistics, assembling gear and hearing of the experiences of friends who had already made the attempt.  Often these stories began with ‘that’s awesome, you can totally do it’ followed a short breath later by ‘but it was the worst night of my existence’.  This was said often enough for me to relinquish my suspicion that it was just hyperbole.  The Rough Guide provided little by way of solace, urging caution by reminding readers that although Kilimanjaro is the highest free standing non-technical peak in the world, upwards of a dozen people each year surrender their lives to it.

The trip had an inauspicious start.  After a hearty lunch of chicken and chipsi (i.e. fries) with our guide and the company owner (we chose a locally owned company, Kilimanjaro Brothers, who I whole-heartedly recommend), we were instructed to go to our rooms and get our gear ready for inspection.  As I had spent hours wondering whether my Marks Work Wearhouse gloves would result in hypothermia, I was quite pleased to undergo inspection.  As Gillian began to dutifully unpack her compression bags, I began frantically searching pockets as the realization set in that I had lost something I needed – the keys to my locks!  Our guide Robert arrived to Gillian’s gear stacked neatly on her bed and a deflated me, sitting on my duffel bag.  While he got introduced to my absentmindedness, I got an introduction to his resourcefulness when he returned to our room five minutes later with a handsaw.  There is something magical about the fact that while you may not be able to find change for a 5000 THS ($3) note just about anywhere in Tanzania, you can find a handsaw in a matter of minutes.  A couple of precarious looking strokes later, the inspection was carried out and we made our way to the rental shop.

At first, being led down the stairs of a decrepit and seemingly empty building made us relieved that we’d already deposited our money into the hands of the tour operator.  But those concerns gave way to overwhelm as we entered a series of small rooms packed floor to ceiling with outdoor gear, shed by the thousands that had gone before us.   The gear was much what you would expect in a seventies ski chalet: pastel versions of mismatched Marmot, Northface and Patagonia fell over one another in a bid to make another trip to the summit.  Loyalty to the decade of my birth prevailed and I picked out a pair of baggy blue rain pants and a cerulean, black and white jacket that was vaguely clammy and that instinct told me not to smell.

Anticipation is the enemy of sleep and diamox its companion.  This is a truth I became reacquainted with later that evening.  The insurance policy against altitude sickness, diamox is a drug that is widely taken that may alleviate or prevent altitude sickness and whose diuretic effects will ensure that you have to get up multiple times a night.  The prospect of doing this in sub-zero temperatures encouraged us to seek a company that provided portable toilets.  Wimpy? Maybe, but it was an excellent decision (more on that later).  The morning saw the bad omens reversing.  Packing snacks into my daypack waist strap, I found my errant keys.  Despite raining the entire week preceding our arrival, the skies were clear, absent the heavy clouds of the upcoming rainy season.  So clear was the sky that we were treated to a view of the imposing Kilimanjaro snowcap for a good twenty minutes of our drive to the park gates.