5k Kate

An end. A beginning. I’m settled in at Kwale and Aruwa’s house. Our second home in Upiara. The run up to this departure was so exaggeratingly slow, that I’m surprised at how fast the past two days have felt.  Tuesday was my last work day in Limol, and consequently everyone who had ignored my requests for language help in the last two weeks came at the same time to help. I was able to get a few good recordings in and I also recorded some tutorials in Ende for how to use the camera and video cameras. Otherwise I spent the day organizing the corpus for leaving here and finishing some last minute transcriptions.  I spent all day Wednesday packing, giving things away to friends, and organizing what I’m leaving for Catherine as clearly as possible. The men all went hunting and the women went for fish. I went with Wagiba our dog Maya for sago and got my 18th run in a row! Wagiba said some really nice things to me, like how nice my Ende has gotten and how I’m everyone’s daughter in th...

To say that the past two weeks have been rough would be an understatement. Though as much as I’ve been “roughing it” this past year, I guess it was bound to catch up with me eventually. As my departure date comes closer (ever so painfully slowly), I’m trapped between the pleasant feeling of having wrapped up all my major projects and investigations and feeling confident that I’ve accomplished an enormous amount and the unpleasant feeling of not having enough time/energy to start new projects and feeling guilty that maybe I haven’t don’t enough. My self-confidence and to a certain extent my whole personality I feel is fed by a constant rush of movement forward. To have that stalled whether voluntarily or involuntarily shakes me to my core, making me very unstable. Things that didn’t bother me too much before have now become unbearable (meager food provisions, the disparity between men and women, the low quality of life here, an unfortunate academic drama back home (which is ATM entirely...