Something New

          Something new – This journey is waiting to be defined. An emptiness cupped, patient and impending, book-ended by dates, solid departures. Although (or perhaps, because) I’ve been before to Africa, I cannot predict the experience that awaits. A heavy blankness looms, flitting with ghost scents and sounds of the tropics. Yellow pineapple, succulent, ripened to the day before decay. Muezzin, shouts of jubilee and importuning, in a human language intuited but not understood. And then all fades to a wisp and the leaden darkness pulls within: the unknown. But within that space, adrenaline tingles and soars with the unblemished potential that goes hand in hand with the un-defined.

           The airplane is dry. The air sucks at the moisture in my eyes, I sleep and wake. Meals are designed to slow digestion and other natural processes (I’m convinced!). Then delay, transfer, haze – I make my connection, but my backpack does not. A traveler’s nightmare, but no big deal. It is resolved with little more than ordinary paperwork confusion. The pack will be delivered to my guesthouse (though it unfortunately lacks a physical address). I buy a toothbrush, am overcharged by a taxi, and fall into deep tossed jetlag dreams. These are the ‘rites of passage’ that once accepted, quickly pass.

           Some nights in Dar es Salaam, then onwards North...