London, UK
All of the teams have gathered here in London for a debrief of our Africa time and perhaps a little respite before life takes over again. We are staying at the Royal St. Katherine's retreat center, a former convent that has rich and wonderful history. The teams from Uganda and Malawi are here with Team Ghana and we all have so many wonderful stories to tell!
Our flight arrived in London at 5:30 AM yesterday. This was our "free" day, so little time was wasted on sleep as we were on the road early to take in as many sights as possible. First, the Tower of London! Now, I thought (perhaps I am the only one) that the Tower was just that....a tower. Figured maybe a half hour to see it, maybe a little more. Nope. The Tower is really really large and spread out. And the history of it probably takes the better part of a day to listen to. But we don't have the better part of a day, so let's get at it!
We see the towers, hear the stories, then most people want to head to do some shopping at Covent Gardens but Liam, Tracey and I want to stay back to find the torture tower and see all the cool torture stuff from days gone by. We decide that there must be another tower we haven't seen, and start out on the "Wall Walk" which surely will get us to the torture tower! An hour later we are still walking, we cannot get down from the wall, there are no exits. There is no torture tower. There is no escape. We are prisoners just the same as the ones who carved their names and pleadings into the walls so long ago. We are doomed.
OK, fine. I'm getting dramatic. We got out. Eventually. Tracey just about killed me with laughter when she dubbed our adventure the "Interactive Torture Walk". We never did see what we set out to find. But at least we made it out alive. Can't say that much about Anne Boleyn.
The rest of London is a blur. We had lunch at a really cool pub.
Liam and I did the whirlwind tour to look at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and a few other sights within walking distance then we all pretty well decided to call it a day. It's hard being up for 36 hours with no sleep so we were all done by 6 PM.
I learned (well, not really but Liam saved me many times) that if you are from Canada you can easily be run over by a vehicle in London because we may think that we look both ways before crossing the road but we really don't. Look left, step out on street whilst looking right. Problem is stepping onto a London street after looking left can get you killed because the lane the car is hurtling at you from is to your right. Couple this with the "Frogger" type street crossings we have been doing for weeks in Africa and you come up with a very dangerous combination of aggressive crossing and wrong way looking if that makes any sense at all!
Today there were some tears. Well, quite a few tears. Everyone has a story, something that has touched them and caused them to reflect on how lucky we are to have been born where we were. We've been told that the person who will find your journey the most interesting is ourselves. We know that, although we believe that the stories we have in our minds are riveting and will keep audiences enraptured for hours, it isn't really the case. We have to say goodbye to the people who have shared these experiences with us and understand the emotions. We have to go home to our families, whom we have missed terribly, but they have been living their lives without us there and will have stories to tell as well.
We are Out of Africa. I'm Alberta bound. I miss my husband and my kids terribly and I know when I see them I will cry tears of happiness and won't be ashamed of them. And sometime, when the moment hits me, I'm going to cry other tears for what I have seen, and I won't be ashamed of those either.
Fantastic Deb!!!
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