Musings

I have time left on my internet session but no connector for my camera and the computer - so really no desire to tell any of my stories at present ... but, I made one discovery today.

One day last week, I started to feel exhausted and shaky. It hit me around midday and I returned to the hotel to eat, pound some water and hope with all my might that it wasn't the malaria that I was expecting. After long hours of sleeping and lying around - moping really - I recovered with bright eyes and all my energy the next day.

Then, one day this week, I started the day with massive exhaustion. I had already planned some business in town and a trip to the village so I went about my day with Lucas only something was very very off. I sat quietly next to Lucas on the dala dala, I walked quietly through the village painting on a smile with every greeting - trying my best to not show how wiped out I was feeling.

On the way back from the village, Lucas asked if I was ok. I told him I didn't know what happened - I was not feeling like myself. As I looked out the window, watching cows, goats, kids, women, cars, trees, red sand, tarmac and chickens fly by - the common denominator hit me... The first time I was wiped out was the day Laura and Hadley left. The second day I felt wiped out was the day after Carter left. Somewhere deep deep down beyond even my conscious recognition of my sadness about my friends leaving me was a depression that manifested itself physically and left me grieving a little bit to see them go.

Today, the day after the second bout of 'depression' I awoke sprightly at 7am with energy for an 8am morning meeting, a trip to the market in Kiganza to have a skirt made and a long journey on foot into Mgaraganza village to visit the building site. Now I'm back early enough to blog a bit, grab some grub, and head home for an early evening with a glass of wine and a new book.

A good friend and mother figure in SLC, MaryJane Simmons, recently shared an email - a toast to girlfriends - that recounted the physical benefit of girlfriends and girlfriend time. According to some studies, time with your girlfriends actually contributes to the creation of the happy brain juice - seratonin. Now - while Carter isn't exactly a girlfriend, he's a great proxy! He would even say so himself ... he's great at diving into those girly topics of love, longing, relationships, emotions, etc. etc. (Carter, I hope you don't mind me calling you out!) Anyway - I've pasted the little blurb that MJ shared in her email. I get it and I miss my girlfriends. But tomorrow I'll share pics of the work, updates and a great video of kids singing on the school site!

A woman just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection--the relationship between
stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life
experiences. Physically this quality "girlfriend time" helps us to create more seratonin--a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings?--rarely. Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.