“This world was never my home.”

I have always had a restless, wandering spirit; looking for, I now know, a place of contentment for my soul.  This world has never been my home.  To me, it is just scenery passing by as I travel along the road of my life.  From time to time I pass a place and think “This place has promise, I’ll stop here for a while”, but alas, it could not hold me.  The water always seemed too shallow.
For the last sixty years of my travel, I have had only one companion, my wife Carolyn.    I am her world and as her world turned she moved with it. How blessed I am to have her with me.  I trust no one else. 
There was a place where once we stopped.  Oh, how wonderful it was.  I felt I had arrived home, there in the African bush, a hundred years from any place.  This was a place of beginnings.  I felt as if I had been made from this very soil. 
The Southern Cross was the cross on the steeple of my church. I understood the songs of the birds, baboons were my squabbling neighbors.  The swishing noise in the grass warned me of the Black Mamba or Cobra on the hunt.  The lion and leopard respected me as I did them.  Hippo’s, always angry and aggressive, prowled the river banks.  And the Crocodiles who, lying in wait for the thirsty, have no rules.
I loved it there, in central Mozambique, along the Indian Ocean, but sadly it was not to be.  I found this place too late.  Eventually, my health drove us back to the USA.
We are both approaching seventy-nine years old.  I have a bad heart.  Broken by what, just bad health or regrets?  My travels have stopped.  My health has anchored me.  Now my past is able to overtake me.  I have time to reflect on past sins, as do other people.  “Remember what you did to me thirty years ago?”
Soon, a month, a year or two, who knows, my life will end.  The bruised souls of people I injured will be free of me.  But for all of that, there are those that love me still.  Those that know the inestimable value of being forgiven and the wondrous liberty of forgiving others.
To my wife and companion of my travels, I say don’t let my leaving distress you.  We have been separated for short periods before.  This journey of ours through eternity is really just getting started.  I have a sneaking suspicion that what I've been looking for is just over the next hill.  That makes me smile.

Marshall Kimbrough-Warren           

Aww, The Memories of Africa.

Like warm bath water, the memories of Africa slowly cleared my mind of life's problems.  I remember the nights Carolyn and I would sit, watching the Southern Cross move across the sky.  The nights were so clear.  In the African bush, there aren't any man-made lights to intrude into the darkness and without the preamble of twilight, night falls.

We were 200 kilometers from the nearest town, but civilization was still evident.  Satellites crisscrossed the night sky.  Each night we would count them.  The one night record was 14.  

With the cool of night, the mosquitos would disappear, the day noises would stop and silence would descend on the bush.  Then, ever so slowly, the night sounds would begin.  They were more subtle, softer and elusive.  "Listen, hear that?"  A spider scurried over the sand.  We picked our feet up until the sound subsided.  

From the giant baobab trees came the low buzz of bee colonies that lived in them and the soft flutter of wings as parrots settled in their nesting holes.  An occasional "plop", like a wet sponge, when a large white baobab flower fell from its heights. 

The night is the time of predators; from the lion to the smallest insect hunting mouse.  The cobra and mamba silently glided through the grass, while the vine snake prowled the trees looking for roosting birds, and the puff adder lay in ambush.  Spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and beetles, turned the ground into a battlefield. 

When it got too creepy outside we would move into our thatched roof living area and turn on the one overhead light bulb.  The light would attract our nightly friends.  Bats flying around the bulb catching, whatever.  On the dirt floor were our friends, like Fast Freddies, large spiders that moved to fast to step on, hunted.  Lizards stalked their prey.  Beetles of every description scurried aimlessly about, never seeming to accomplish anything.  Over time we all became accustomed to each other.  

By ten o'clock we would retire to the safety of our net enclosed bed and fall asleep to the buzz of life going on around us.

Marshall Kimbrough-Warren