6/2/98: Both Ruth and I are finally experiencing our first real case of homesickness…
NOTE: Photo above is a village home, or musha, that I photographed on one of our forays into the bush around Karanda Mission Hospital. The blue haze from the cooking fire seemed like an apt metaphor for our homesickness.
6/2/23: By this point in our journey we had both become comfortable enough in the routine of long-term travel. We had gained a degree of efficiency in figuring out how to get the lay of the land in a new location, in packing up and hitting the road and so on. But it was only at this point that we finally woke up feeling kind of blue and deeply missed home.
We began to long for family and friends back home. I was even missing my dog, Socs. Most of all, we were missing being involved at our church. I silently hoped that everyone back in Chicago was missing us too!
In our mood of melancholy we still decided to make dinner for our new friends there at Karanda that night. Dan and Julie S., Melita L., Rita I., and Judy P. all came over. They had been so hospitable to us and had already made dinner for us on various nights. After dinner we all played Canasta again. Ruth and I did surprisingly well for beginners and managed to run up a pretty high score. Looking back on it now, I wonder if those dear people were sensing our mood and perhaps played less skillfully than they might have, so as to distract us from our homesick blues.
