Week 3 away from "home". I switched countries yesterday. Madagascar to Tanzania. Picked up food poisoning on the way, i think somehow in the plane, at 2am, when i foolishly ate the fruit.

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As I sat on the tarmac waiting to depart from DC, my sister called to tell me she is pregnant. In my heart, I've been dreading this moment since I got her email telling me she was getting married (I was in an airport lounge in Ethiopia - she'd been trying to reach me by phone to tell me, but I was unreachable and at last she gave up and just sent the email).

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High moments in Mada over the last 3 weeks - warm and interesting people. My French held up and my fears of being completely lost in each meeting were unfounded. In Mada I loved how everyone always greets each other personally at the beginnning and end of each meeting. Three kisses and a handshake. Sometimes in a big meeting it felt like it would be more efficient if we just lined up like soccer players and greeted each other in a long line ("good game, good game, good game"). Mada is beautiful - lemurs! chameleons! Terraced hills and the varying greens of rice paddies stretching out in all directions. Tana is all winding streets and hills, and even the smallest, poorest homes throughout the city and countryside are painted pretty colours and have balconies with potted plants set out in the sunshine.

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As I sometimes allude to in this journal, this family thing has just been this impossible long drawn out challenge of my 30s. Endless complications with BT and where we might live, culminating in me moving by myself but the two of us deciding to stay together (to what end? who knows). The seeming incompatibility of BT and I starting a family with my work that I also love. This battle between "us" and "i". It is hard to watch my sister take all these steps that just seem to elude me. Settled life, friends and hobbies, apartment with art on walls and thriving plants, husband. Meanwhile, I have none of these things.

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Low moments over these three weeks - this work is hard and slow and never-ending and somewhat delicate. A week of fighting jet lag and attending meetings in a fog.. in French no less. Then a week of stomach flu and then the food poisoning. But I got antibiotics yesterday and finally starting to feel better... always have the moment when I think about all the clinics and villages I just visited where this simple act of going and getting antibiotics is impossible. So unacceptable. How hard can it be to make health services available to someone in a village? Turns out, it's pretty hard.

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A steady stream of photos and anecdotes from my sister: My parents are visiting her in Vancouver. My sister and her husband give my dad an early (grand)Father's Day card. In the picture he is stunned and disbelieving. There is a bottle of champagne in the fridge, and they pop the cork and toast the newest member of our family. My sister tells my brother over the phone and he insists that she call him "Uncle S" for the rest of the conversation. My mother introduces herself to my sister's belly: "Hi baby. This is your grandmother".

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Only 3 weeks away but it feels like forever. It's tough to be gone for so long. Life at home proceeds without me. That sentence is so telling. I've spent so little time in my new life in DC that now when I close my eyes and think "home", no place comes to mind. So what do I mean when I say, "life at home proceeds without me"? I am thinking of my parents, my sister, my brother. BT. They are home. It doesn't matter that they live in 3 different provinces.

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I have been dreading this moment of my sister starting her own family. It's not a pretty sentiment at all, and it's hard to admit to it because it's so petty and jealous. But I'm the oldest and I've always been first and it is not easy to watch her surpass me in these ways.

And yet when she calls to tell me, instead of the rush of anxiety, inadequacy, and doubt that I have been bracing for, all I feel is joy and love and wonder.

10:14 a.m. - 2017-06-15