Since I last appeared here, which seems now like many moons ago, we have spread our wings and made our way to the Southern Hemisphere. It is a strange thing, to have had our seasons in reverse. I left you with tales of the gathering of sheep in October, and the sprinkling of snow and the feeling that winter had arrived. This sprinkling was followed by a rather more thorough carpeting, more deep than I have experienced since childhood. I enjoyed the crunch underfoot of my meanderings and the way forms were rendered in ‘absence’, with just a hint of a house or a wheel and the world became a black and white photograph. There were also some incredible icicles rooted like fangs to cliffs as the still falling spring water bubbled away inside them.
But, as is typical in Iceland, the weather changed from day to day, and we still enjoyed sunshiney visits to farms and shores and abandoned houses. It was a busy time as some of the sheep that had been gathered were slaughtered by the extended family and prepared in various ways, and everyone who had helped with the gathering and the slaughter was rewarded with a share of the meat. Kitchens were full of activity and smoke houses gently billowed their birch smoke. At the same time we were readying our little red van Mariubjalla for her imminent departure to Reykjavik, which involved finding a new set of tyres for a rare diameter size. I had started to worry, as there was no way we could drive south on snowy roads with the tyres that we had – bald as they were through to the wire mesh! But as with the majority of ‘problems’ in Iceland, we were provided for through a passing comment to a family friend.
I had been missing my friends terribly so was ready to leave for a while. We had planned a month long stop over in England specifically to spend some good times visiting people, and also to try and raise some pennies towards our onwards leg by doing some Christmas sales with my Cabinet of Curiosities from all over the world, and some hand made jewellery of mine. This is something I have been doing for many years now, in various forms. I have sold my wares on street corners and beaches, school halls, and church halls. A few years ago I discovered that some people, especially around Christmas time, liked me bringing my treasures to their house and transforming their living rooms into Aladdin’s caves. They could invite their friends and everyone had basketfulls of Interesting and Beautiful Things to peruse over a mince pie or two. I like this better than being out on the street as it feels more like a cosy gathering and I can tell the stories of where I found those objects. I managed to do a couple of these while back and through doing so had some surprise visits from friends.
We were ultimately heading to Kenya, where I spent my teenage years and where my parents and grandmother still live. I have not been home for Christmas in many years, and felt it was time. So Orri and I decided to make a trip of it and see out the worst of winter here. And so in a few blinks of an eye we went from vast shin deep Icelandic snowscapes to the damp and sunny orange leafed Autumn of England, and now we find ourselves sitting in the shade of trees and porches, and glad to be dry, even though it is the ‘rainy season’ here! It is strange to have my year this way round, but then there has been nothing ‘regular’ about this year, and I like it that way.
Tomorrow is an exciting day as we are heading to the north of Kenya to a region called Samburuland where I made a documentary in 2006, called After The Rains Came. I am going to visit all the people I spent the summer with that year, and to take a wedding video I have made to someone who married while I was there. This is no ordinary wedding video, mind you! The wedding lasted three days, involved a slaughter of a bull, highly decorated warriors leaping into the air and a lot of singing and dancing. Fortunately there have been rains up there recently. When I shot the film there had been a long drought, the end of which thankfully coincided with my arrival, but as a result I was given the Samburu name Nashangai, which means ‘The one who came with rain’. So there’s a bit of a pressure to deliver on subsequent visits…fingers crossed! I shall bring tales of that journey on my return.
In the meantime I would just like to say how touched I was by the number of people who have read this blog and loved it. When I was out in the wilds of Iceland wondering how many more hundred kilometers it would be until I found internet access, I sometimes wondered why I was doing this. ‘Was anybody actually reading it?’ I wondered. It turns out you were, and it suddenly felt like I had so much company on the ups and downs of this rolling road and people knew where I was at. Please do feel free to leave comments here to keep the connection going. It is most lovely to hear real comments straight from the horse’s mouth, but the fact is I am Here now… wherever There was, and the land of blog is a rock we can all stand on.
Journeys In Between 