Adieu 2010...Welcome 2011

A long, sometimes difficult year is approaching its end, only a few hours left of this 2010 so full of hopes and dreams, but that turned out to be rather different from what I could have expected.

 

Worse or better? It's hard to say. It has definitely been an intense learning experience that I feel started even before, back in 2009 when I flew home to South Africa after spending the summer in Europe, came to its climax around March and April 2010, and got dramatically ripe in May when I decided to leave Cape Town and set on this Cape to Cairo journey of mine.


I'm now in Kenya, spending New Year's Eve in the peace of Kakamega Forest Reserve: not many people around, simple food, great hikes, and the opportunity for some good one-to-one time with myself, taking stock everything that happened in my life this year. Ups, downs, pain, loss and new light and purpose too.

Kakamega rainforest at sunrise, by Melanie Szirony

The end of year is traditionally a time of reflection, so here are a few thoughts I will mull over tonight and that I'd like to share:

1. I've just purchased my air ticket from Nairobi to Addis Ababa, my gateway to Ethiopia, the next country along the road...but am a little bit disappointed that I'm not traveling overland, the first time (and hopefully last) on this trip.
2. Said that, I've also extended my Kenyan visa, so I should have time to travel north to Lake Turkana anyway... just need to find a lift on a truck after Maralal I reckon, no public transport up there.
3. On a different note, it comes to mind now that last year I was watching the first sunrise of 2010 in Cape Town, on Muizenberg beach sharing a bottle of champagne with Claire...many things have changed since then, but am still here, a whole lot of inspiring extra experiences in the bag, and looking forward to another year worth living to the fullest.
4. Yes, it's been a roller-coaster ride this 2010: many ups and downs, thrills and chills, but in the end one of the most dramatic, life-changing, and min-opening I've had in a long while. For some time after leaving Cape Town in tatters I thought it was going to be my classic annus horribilis, but I have a feeling that I'm going to remember it as an annus mirabilis instead.

"All energy flows according to the whims of the Great Magnet.

What a fool I was to defy Him.

Never cross the Great Magnet. I understood this now..."

-Hunter S. Thompson

To all my friends and readers, old and new, near and far, I wish you a very happy beginning of a prosperous new year. Stay Tuned, I will see you on the other side.