The hardest working man in the goodbye business

This will be my last blog post in NZ. Not totally sure when I'll get near a computer next, flying out in 2 days...I'll be back online as mud huts allow.

You really can live on 3 hours sleep a night. I hope I have a liver to take to Tanzania. Francoise and I have had so many moving, tearful hugs and touching well wishes from mates I've lost count. I kinda realised last night while pulling off my signature floor spin on the D-Floor for the third time in so many days that this is my last Saturday in NZ for a while. Next Sat I'm in a new place. But you'll all be there wit me. As will my anti-AIDS pills.

Why so serious?

I must be at warning label levels of caffeine, taurine, ginseng, guarana etc etc. When not filing or packing under the influence, I'm going to so many short farewell coffees with random people I feel like a politician. 3 days of work remain. 7 days in Wellington. 9 days in NZ. 101 days without a lion scar.

Drinking V and packing into the wee hours. Is it when you start talking to yourself in a gravelly Christian Bale voice at 2am about the pros and cons of taking toaster that its time for a holiday? Or another coffee?


Wheeeeee!

Paperwork A Go Go!!

A red letter day for wifey and I. After around 8 months of limbo (the purgatorial state not the dance) finally signed the volunteer contracts, got the visas and the transit letters. All papers come with photos of us looking respectively like a businesswoman and a scared convict.You can guess who looks like who. Or maybe not. It's all becoming real, man. I have an evacuation plan that dictates in the event of a dire emergency (say like a Nickelback concert) I will be evacuated by way of road to Nairobi.

Flight booking and first installments of volunteer settlement cha-ching to commence soon. Looks like we fly out on our 27 hour-ish flight on the afternoon of Thursday March 11th from Auckland to Hong Kong, then Nairobi (Kenya) then Kilimanjaro International Airport in the morning of Friday March 12th. Love the date line.

Oscar winning tearful thanks to all the friends, family and colleagues who encouraged my wife and I to follow a crazy dream. I hope, if I haven't seen you already, to say farewell to you before we race off.

You know, alot of people told me that I should never wrestle again...I mean volunteer...but the only one that's gonna tell me when I'm through doing my thing, is you people watching my adventures here.

RAM JAM-ZANIA!!!

Friday Flash

Our man in the country formerly known as Tanganyika and Zanzibar is racing to the city of Dar Es Salaam today to grab our visas! I'm expecting visas, contracts, elephant guns on Monday, can't wait!

Hasta la vista, Petone

Spent the last night out there after work last night, painting windows, moving the fabled tub back and forth, mowing, looking through the tenants belongings, trying on their clothes etc Now we just need to sort through and consolidate our boxes upon boxes of foppish consumer goods..

ps Quite proud of the weed matting, mulch in the foreground. Only took us 4 years to get it done.

Heat

http://thecitizen.co.tz/newe.php?id=16968

I guess what sleepy town is complete without the odd vehicular enabled Police vs "Gangstar" shootout. The first phrase in Swahili I intend to learn on my arrival is "unarmed volunteer" closely followed by "armed volunteer, bring it"

Back to the Future

Someone call Doc Emmett Brown. I have seriously gone back in time to 1999. While we rent our house in Petone, we are crashing (squatting?) in the middle of uni student central, next door to my old flat on Devon Street. But now IM the cool 'mature student' strutting down Kelburn Parade to my grown up job. Im visiting the old haunts: swimming to the Oriental Bay fountain, drinking with the glowworms down Holloway Road, loitering in the Uni Quad hoping someone will ask me to play a game of hacky sack.

Not long to go now, all going to plan. Frantically packing, storing, weeding, visiting, crying, dreaming, game playing, filing, saving, not saving etc. No space in my brain to actually get excited yet, still so much to do. Roll on final visa confirmation on Feb 22nd.