i feel like i should be the salmon.

thanks to the friend who bought me this book long ago. i just read it. and it's so good. i feel like it described my feelings over the past few years and really helped me understand how to be ok with what i struggle with.
"here every bird and fish knew its course. every tree had its own place upon this earth. only man had lost his way."
this is not the last line of the book, but a good one. the ending lines are absolutely beautiful. i'm glad to recommend it to you.

today is election day in south africa. so everything is closed. we had the day off, which i needed. the past few days have been really overwhelming and emotionally draining, i just didn't realize it until i slept for 14 hours last night, beginning at 630 in the evening. i started working with the street kids yesterday: melvin, carl, and andrew. they are so dang cute. and sneaky. we played "memory" and they were able to keep their eyes on the matching cards in the huge stack of constantly shuffled cards. i guess you get good with your eyes when you are live by stealing and sneaking around. you learn to keep your eyes on the winning cards.
i also helped lead a xhosa-speaking HIV support group. as if i know anything about xhosa or being HIV+, but they seemed ok with that. i learned that "molo" is hello in xhosa. soon as i can get my clicks down, i'll be able to learn xhosa. and afrikaans. and zulu. yeah right.

so it's election day, like i said. everything is closed. the ANC (currently governing party) intentionally left the christian party off the ballots and so last night they had to completely reprint the ballots with all the parties on there. the ANC said they were hoping the power failures would mean they couldn't reprint the ballots b/c there would be no electricity. i guess they assumed the ignored party would just concede, after the millions of dollars they have spent on their campaign which included hanging a "vote for us" sign on every single light post in the city. i'm not even kidding. go democracy!

our drug crisis center has a presentation at the police station tonight. if they like us, they'll refer the drug-related cases they get to us. it could be a big deal.