Sensory onslaught at something as simple as breakfast. After almost two years without this I am overwhelmed by unfamiliar sensations— the cool breeze of fans against my skin in the humid morning, some kind of ambient music, the sound of an espresso machine, and so so so many people everywhere. The air smells of woodsmoke* and faintly of diesel. It is like I am waking up, I have been sleeping for two years and I am waking up.

I fall right back into the way I’ve always let myself float along this river of sensation, just observing or not even observing, just feeling, soaking in all the ways I have no idea what is happening. Basking in the sheer privilege of finding myself half a world away.

I clung to my instinct that I need this and it cost me. After this two year pause at home I wondered how I would feel to pick this up again. Would I miss all the things at home, the connected feeling of being more present in my community and family? But now that I’m here I feel the relief of feeling something deep inside me click into place, and with it the certainty that this— I think I mean *I* — was worth fighting for.

*****
*a moment of nostalgia for the first moment I stepped onto this continent, in Ethiopia, 13 years ago, and also puzzlement— Addis Ababa is cool and people warm their homes with fires. Why this smell now, here, in Kinshasa? An hour later I realize it is woodsmoke from what is almost certainly a pizza oven; I am in a 4 star hotel after all.

8:16 p.m. - 2021-11-24