Grateful Year #10

Been trying my hardest to forget it's Thanksgiving, and work helps; my staff is scrambling around trying to get the demo plots going in each of the project areas, monthly reports are due (which means I make a lot of phone calls and emails to people who forget each month just how long a month is), and I'm flying down to attend a big Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) conference in Johannesburg on Monday. It would be pretty blase (a lot of sitting, listening, and swapping cards after awkward conversations over poorly mixed cocktails), if not that I am representing my agency in a select group of NGOs (somehow named the "Big Five") to some awfully large actors on the global development stage. Programme reviews the following week; coordinating a motorcycle safety training; case studies; field visits (where I get to be the bad guy to poor performing extension workers); urban demos; M&E training; IPM training; partner agreements.

Maybe I won't miss Christmas.

On my way home from work last night around 21:30 (9:30 p.m.), I bought two boiled eggs from a 8 or 9 year old boy who doubtless had to come with an empty carton. Last night I dreamed that the rains didn't come; I woke this morning upset over that (rain's in the back of your mind all the time in my line of work), itching the mosquito bites on the soles of my feet and thinking of home.

It's time for the grateful list, i.e. what I'm grateful for:

1. Not being broke. I was broke for a long time and it's hard.
2. Mollisols/Ultisols. America has some of the best soils in the world. I wonder what the pioneers would have done if they came rolling over the Appalachians and found Kalahari sands in the Ohio Valley.
3. Running water. Frequent bucket baths make functioning showers the greatest thing in the world. 
4. Health. 
5. Fresh food nearby.
6. The neighbors. They are just about the nicest people and the kids speak Lozi in short sentences very loudly, usually in a descriptive manner about whatever's happening ... helps with learning.
7. The guards. They do a lot of stuff without too much instruction.
8. Cell phones. I used to talk to Mom & Dad once every three or four months and it was like the line was made of gold. Now it's whenever the both of us are awake and it's cheap. 
9. Old Crow Medicine Show. Chug along.

Happy Thanksgiving.