Happy Coincidences

Some people will say that the stuff that happened today was a coincidence, whereas others would put it down to some sort of higher power. I'm probably one of those who would argue the former, but I can definitely see why people go for the latter.

The reason I say this will become clear later, but the context for the question is that the 10th February (the day I'm writing about) was my German granddad's funeral and the next day was exactly a month since his passing. I wrote an initial blog post about it all, but it wasn't very good because it wasn't all that personal. Then I rewrote it and became much more personal (check out my post called Opa if you'd like to see that) about my emotions and memories. This one was much better and based on a letter I'd written to Oma after Opa died. As a result of this letter, which mentioned memories of playing chess with Opa, Oma decided that she would like me to have his old chess board. This thing is beautiful and has a lot of memories for myself and others, so it's an honour that I'll be getting it. It'll become one of those family heir looms. Seriously, it's special and I was so surprised and proud to be offered it.

Then roll on VETA and our weekly team meeting, followed by an Active Citizenship Day presented by Ed, Musa and Saraa. This one was about gender equality and it was interesting to find out about the comparisons between the UK and Tanzania. A lot of good discussions went on and a few intriguing facts too (the USA is only 27th in gender equality - at least according to their statistics). After that, I once again couldn't do anything because I was part of the data team that has to wait on the KAP survey to be created and filled.

So skip along a few lazy hours and I'm at the beach again. I met this guy called Sammi, a Brit from Somalia who had an American accent due to going to American schools and working in Tanzania to increase the profits of his family's cashew nut production company. I hadn't quite realised how many nationalities he had brewing in him until I just typed that. Jeez. Anyhow, we chatted about what we were both doing in Tanzania and for how long, then moved on to politics when he found out that I want to study it at uni. We got into a good discussion ranging from the Cold War, Brexit, Trump and Putin, but all culminating in what we think the future will look like. He reckons that, like in Georgia, Putin will back up from a lot of the Balkans and much of his actions are triggered by fear (e.g. Poland's joining of NATO), so there's nothing to really fear. On the other hand, I think that with Trump appearing isolationist, combined with possible nationalist governments in Germany and France this year, that NATO will become too weak and Putin, being someone who wants Russia to return to the size of the USSR, will invade the Balkans. If left unchecked (which it looks like would happen), this would be inviting him to go further.

Those of you guys who aren't interested in politics probably don't care about that, so it's time to move onto another debate: remembering it was the day of my granddad's funeral and the next day would be a month after his passing, whether or not the next part of the evening was a coincidence. When Maria A. and I were about to leave, we noticed the sun was setting, so we walked along the beach. There was a full moon, so the high tide was going pretty far up the beach and they looked gorgeous catching the sunlight. It was impossible to take a bad picture. Just point at the sun and click. The beach seemed to get even more beautiful as we went and the sun got lower - it was just so calming. I also knew that the next day a comet would fly by and it was amazing that all this happened on such an important day.

Whether it was coincidence or not, it was incredible.