It’s been a strange couple months being back in America.
Having left and returned to Gordon before, that campus very much feels like a neutral zone of ambiguity- of unfamiliar faces but a solid routine of classes, of introverted walks down Phillips Path with coffee clutched in my hand against the streams of people heading to chapel (which I’ve yet to attend).
It’s been an adjustment to fall into other areas of living back on the outskirts of Boston though.
Grocery shopping is still overwhelming. Grocery stores used to be such a relaxing place for me. It was always such a comfort to be able to walk around a warehouse full of comfort foods and being able to see them there, available, but not need to buy them or gain the calories from them. It was nice just to know that your old friends were there- quietly sitting on their respective shelves. It was nice- the organization, the lighting, the availability and variety. Now- every time I walk into a grocery store, I have flashbacks of what the grocery store was like in Mukono- I miss City Shoppers. I miss the deodorant and perfume behind the counter- as if was contraband like cigarettes. I miss the mango ice cream in the freezer and the SPLASH juiceboxes, fresh bread, strange ginger cakes, and Harry Potter wide ruled miniature notebooks. I miss the bars of soap that took up half an aisle and the wall of single rolls of toilet paper, the flamingo print BIC lighters and handwoven baskets of kitchen knives. I miss the stand of fresh fruit that was outside the door, next to the stand for cell phone air time and next to the man who sold meat- which was always bloody and chopped and spilling over the counter edge of his small wooden kiosk.
I was driving through New Hampshire last night and saw the sunset over Portsmouth and the stars sprinkling out above the treeline over I-95. And I thought back to Bemba nights on the roof- sitting on a small stack of cinderblocks on a cement roof, looking at the stars opening up above the Mukono jungle. I thought about sunset over the Kenyan compound and how I can’t remember the striking beauty precisely- but I remember watching the sunset night after night from my stoop and thinking “I will never feel this exact way again- I will never experience this beauty again the way I am experiencing it right now.” So true.
It’s strange to be accessing all these memories alone. To not have anyone around to talk to that can say “mmm, yah! Me too!” No relation and no understanding from a first-had experience. It’s strange to be walking alone and think back to these things and not know how to process, how to share, how to experience this again. It’s strange to sense the presence of these experiences, this past, without context. Without ability to return.
I am starting to sense your location
You are somewhere in the basement
Beating on a makeshift drum kit Freelance Whales
