Zambia Travel Diary – Day 9

2015.09.14 22.12 “You want to stay here forever?” Our safari guide said while we took a break to stretch our legs by the Zambezi river. He was really sweet, polite in a way you could be to friends and not “rich white people” and he knew everything about the animals and different uses of plants. Strong cheekbones and kind eyes, the type of person who seems quiet, regardless of how much they speak. I answered “What?” and he repeated the question.
“Yes. Yes I do.” I said but followed him and my family back to the car.

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There was something about the temperature. I’ve been spending so much time getting too hot and cooling down, sweating and freezing, that the perfect weather soothes my skin and mind in waves of wind. We sat by the Zambezi river, where it’s still calm and not rushing down the Victoria falls, and I, someone who sleeps with three covers in the middle of summer, wasn’t freezing. My body totally relaxed. The definition of warm wind was blowing past and the late afternoon sun managed to keep the temperature from getting too high while still not making a single chill rung through me.

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We continued on our safari after that, took pictures of elephants and impalas. And here I’d been thinking I would need to borrow my mom’s camera, since my 50 mm lens has no zoom whatsoever, but it turns out zoom wasn’t needed.

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We had to leave the car and walk to the part of the park where the rhinos where.

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Also I stole a part of a roof and put it in my notebook

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A lot of trees are very short since the elephants break them down with their trunks.

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Earlier in the day we went to the Victoria falls as well, but we’re going back tomorrow so I’ll have even more to show you! Goodnight.

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The colours of my autumn

Taking a break from the Zambia Travel Diary to share some pictures of this autumn life I flew (blew) into.

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My favourite thing about autumn is the air and the sky.

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Autumn is the best time to return to Sweden

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Zambia travel diary – Day 4

(2015.09.05 I’ve got the world’s greatest grandma. She says she doesn’t care what colour her hair is so when I added some pink to mine she said I could add some to hers too. I put it at the back of her neck, because she suggested a pink fringe but I think it would’ve made mum a bit mad.

(Okay, so apparently that’s all I wrote that day))

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My grandmother. This picture doesn’t look like her. Not like her personality, the way good photos sometimes do, but it looks like someone so I like it anyways.

2015.09.06 I’ve lost count of the days. Or the energy to count them. Maybe that says more. I’m in that moment of wanting to express everything, because what even is my life, at the same time as I’m living a lot, thank you very much, so I’m not sure as to when I should find time for that expression.

Today I went to a kitchen party. It was different. Try to imagine the most stereotypical traditional african party, but then mixed with I don’t even know. It’s one of the ceremonies leading up to the wedding and the woman getting married is brought in covered with a chitenge (piece of fabric in bright patterns that they make clothes of or just use as it is around the waist) and then there was something about the groom being led in to uncover her and give her gifts, but they did it in a bit of a strange order. No one knew exactly what was happening except for the older woman who led everything and walked ahead of us while dancing (shaking her booty). Everyone simply did what she said while everyone cheered and they played loud music on the drums and sang. We laughed a lot.

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Where I sleep and/or hide from insects

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Lizard next to the shower, they’re everywhere but since they don’t crawl into beds or suitcases they’re my homies anyway.

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Ego pic before the kitchen party

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Warm nights (but wrapped in a chitenge anyways). Night!

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I don’t know if I’ve told you but..

I’m going to Zambia!! In a week actually, and now I’m feeling slightly stressed out because I have a ton of things to do. Also I feel like I have to take some time just longing for it since I love longing for stuff and that’s not something I can do later. Three weeks I’m gonna be away for and probably without any internet connection at all, so radio silence will probably occur for most of September. On the other hand I think I’ll have some pretty nice pictures and stories to share when I come back :))) (Wow, I think I’ve never used smileys on this blog before, is this the start of a new era??.) (No.) IMG_1937 IMG_1940 IMG_1942 IMG_1945 IMG_1979 IMG_1982 IMG_1983

Some images of my attempt at packing and the sky and stuff.

How to notice the difference

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different…”
-C.S.Lewis

This, I think, is one of the most underestimated truths.

You can’t look at the difference, you can just look and look again and notice that today is not yesterday.

We do not understand change. We think it’s a moment, the clock striking twelve on New years eve or when you realise you love someone… when in reality that’s just it, you realise the change but that is not the moment it happens. It already has, over and over again, in the choices you keep on making.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that so many good things were once bad – diamonds out of pressed coal – because like the birds rising at dawn, they do not sing about the night.

I realised this while heading out to my room, the little cabin in my garden. It was snowing the other night and this is one of those changes you do notice. But these following pictures are of just that, of the snow and how the light makes everything slightly golden and warm, and how the sun seems to never set in the summer and the flowers make my home rest in a meadow. Nature doesn’t remember the wind from last week. I will not remember how it made everything creak or when the autumn leaves turned muddy and gross, and how even though it was completely dark without the snow, the full moon still managed to create moving shadows everywhere. That is not what I photographed.

The snow doesn’t remember the heat, nor the summer the autumn colours. The flower doesn’t remember the bud or it would never bloom. We think that our problem is that we live in the past, and it is. But our problem is not that we remember. Because we don’t. We see self-chosen memories, not truths, and so we can pick and choose. And we so rarely choose the time in between.

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