Wandering children of Kansas away,

By mountain, by desert, or sea,

Feasting or fasting, at prayer or at play,

Whatever your fortunes may be,

Open the doors of your hearts to the breeze,

Prairie wind never are still,

Hark to the surf in the cottonwood trees,

The breakers that boom on the hill.

Open your soul’s windows–let in the sun–

The prairie sun gay with delight.

Where’er your wandering pathways have run,

Come home tonight.

Come home where Kansas lies under the stars

Twinkling back beauty and joy;

Come and let homely love poultice your scars,

Leave off your restless employ.

Come home where summer winds billow the wheat,

Where golden tides cover the sands;

Come–let your heart’s longings hasten your feet

And home love unfetter your hands.

Come where the tawny sunflower eagerly bends

A tawny frank face to the light,

So do our hearts seek the joy of old friends–

Come home tonight.

Global Voices team members Lova, Jeremy, Lokman and Jillian.
Not pictured: Amira, Eddie, Georgia, Ivan, Leonard and Solana.

I got back from Miami today after four days of passionate conversations about the authenticity of travel (and travel writing) and whether or not Mates of State actually sing a cover of These Days and what to name our cheese babies. I was also lucky to share breakfast sandwiches, beaches, swimming, a sweet backyard pool and a bright green stuffed ferret that looked more like a jalapeño pepper than an animal with some of the best housemates I’ve ever had south of the Mason-Dixon line.

(I also went to We Media Miami 2009, which you can read about here and here. A huge thanks goes to them for sponsoring part of our costs to attend the conference, which challenged the way I think and communicate about new media as a member of the “Dream Generation.”)

Jeremy wrote earlier about how blessed he feels to be working with Global Voices, and I want to echo his love for the organization and the amazing people that constitute it. I am so happy to have found this community, and jumping back into writing for them has made me happy in a way few things apart from the blogren do.

To my Global Voices housemates: A big giant Florida cheers! And I’m still pulling for the next GV summit to be held in Lawrence, Kansas.

Perhaps that is why my image of sexy was, from the time I stopped loving Full House’s Jonathan Taylor Thomas until Edward Norton stole my heart in Fight Club, constructed largely around Joey Tribbiani.

Joey could make anything naughty. Seriously, anything, as evidenced in my beloved Season Four, when he talks about Midwestern cooking. It’s about 2:30 into this clip:

Grandma’s chicken salad. Told you. As my celebrity crushes have shifted from movie stars to hip-hop moguls to scruffy travel writers, that phrase has stuck in my head as the epitome of sex.

Until now.

The Lawrence-based website BoomerGirl.com is marketed to boomer-aged women, currently in their mid-40s to early 60s. It won an EPpy award this year for Best Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site with fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors. BoomerGirl’s popularity rests in its cheeky advice about love, looks and “living out loud,” but all these things pale when compared to Español con Ramon:

Meet Ramon. Ramon is BG’s “exclusive and oh-so-sexy Spanish teacher,” who is dedicated to teaching you, the middle-aged woman, one useful phrase each day. These phrases, posted with accompanying audio clips, include gems like “Este paquete es muy grande” (this package is very large) and “Dónde está la fotocopiadora?” (where is the photocopier?).

My favorite, though, comes from May 29, 2007: Un costal de papas.

I’m far from middle-aged, but Ramon’s sultry voice speaks to me. I’ve been playing it over and over this morning, the words evoking some deeper longing for sun-soaked beaches and illicit getaways with my garden boy.

“A sack of potatoes.”

Mmmm. Say it again, Ramon.

Last night, around 7:30 PM, I set foot in Kansas for the first time in 381 days (I checked). I like flying across the United States — I watch the cities break into checkerboard farmland and the greengoldbrown of the fields reminds me that even though I’m not a farmgirl, I’m definitely a Midwesterner.

Today was a lavish Lawrence-based binge: biking through my parents’ neighborhood, walking downtown, having lunch with an old friend at a new restaurant, being a rock star with my little brother.

Robert Louis Stevenson said, “I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” Still, sometimes it’s just nice to be home.

I haven’t been home (by which I mean lovable Lawrence, KS, home of indie scenesters and dozens of locally owned coffee shops and more banks per capita than anywhere else in the United States*) yet because I’m hanging out with old friends on the East Coast. So far my culture shock has consisted of my amazement at drinkable tap water and skinny jeans.

Right now I’m sitting in the Edwin Ginn Library pretending to be a student at the Fletcher School. Fletcher is currently heading the list of graduate programs I’m considering, making this particular moment simultaneously exciting (I could be here in a year!) and terrifying (I could not be here in a year!).

The future for me consists of grad school applications, making espresso for thirsty, caffeine-addicted grocery shoppers, and traveling around the country catching up with people I haven’t seen for a year. I’ll be blogging, but it remains to be seen how much of Jackfruity will be dedicated to Uganda and how much will expand to include other parts of East Africa, general comments on technology and development, and the occasional cupcake recipe. I also hope to start a new blog focused on the former Soviet Union. (I’ve gotten as far as the name and the template, but content-wise, I’m a little short right now.)

I’ll be paying close attention to what happens to Uganda Bloggers Happy Hour at the end of this month — I hope someone else will make it near and dear to their heart and keep UBHH alive, but the dearth of Ugandan participants last month (27th Comrade being the lone exception) makes me doubtful.

The plan is to return to Uganda within a year, mostly to say hi to friends and chill out in the equatorial sunshine, but for now: so long, and thanks for all the matooke.

*So widely rumored to be true that I didn’t bother looking for a source.

It’s not that I don’t nurture a vast writercrush on admire you both. It’s more…well, what do you say to someone you idolize think highly of?

I could say, I guess, that the mid-airmail disappearance of Chasing the Sea, a gift from a like-minded friend in the States, hurled me into a week of literary despair, during which I read nothing but John Grisham novels and rarely brushed my hair. I could mention that I’ve been pushing The Road to Hell onto all of my friends and coworkers, as well as several strangers, as required reading. I might even reveal that your comments provoked several exclamation-point-riddled e-mails home and at least one change in Facebook status (Rebekah is…beside herself).

But that would ruin the elegant, mature, worldly self-image I’ve so painstakingly constructed, in which all my interactions with celebrities consist of witty remarks (on my part), offers of book deals (on theirs) and frequent consumption of designer sushi (mutual).

Lacking all of the above, I’m just going to say wow, and promise that if you ever happen to visit Lawrence, Kansas, I will a) place myself at your disposal as a tour guide, personal shopper, and/or dinner companion and b) try my best to keep the volume of my screams of excitement at a level that’s more “strangled” than “raucous.”