Wherever You Will Go

"Goodbyes do not get easier, the more of them you say."

(Again I must refer back to my lists for an entry point into what I'm feeling.)

To be fair this particular lesson is not a new one; I have said many goodbye before. On this trip, in this place and in others, many many others, how many people have I known? How many of my "nearest and dearest" are far away? I should be used to this by now, this tremendous rush of feeling one gets for people, any people, when they are all you have. If I can give you one bit of advice today, it would be that nothing brings you closer to people --often too close-- than travel. Whether this is good or not is mostly irrelevant.

It is that time again: the time of goodbye. The trip ends, and from the end of the driveway I am waving to my friends --for in my mind they are all friends, whether chosen or by default-- as they drive away; quietly and without ceremony in private cars coming to carry them off to new hotels, or in a flurry of tears and photographs, as it was this morning when the boys who are heading on to Kampala, flanked by their new and nervous looking group, loaded into jeeps and were off to the Masai Mara.

I woke up at 6, though I didn't have to. I am so accustomed now to waking up at the first sign or sound of movement from the camp, or even before it, that the fact that I didn't have to get up today at all if I didn't want to... just didn't register. I woke up at 6 and deliberately did not take my tent down, and did not go to the truck for breakfast. Instead I paced around the lounge where we spent last night, watching TV or pretending to watch TV and hoping that if we don't mention "leaving" than it will never happen. I pace, I sit, I stand, I sit, I read, I don't read. I pretend I am not just waiting and feeling lost without the chaos of the truck; on the truck there are things to do, so much to clean and stack and put away... for two months now there has been precious little inactivity, despite the never-ending drives.

The boys stand by the jeeps, shuffling their feet and looking at their hands and arguing about who has or has not taken their malaria pills. The 5 of us still staying at the camp --though another 3 have left in the intervening hours-- I admit I am grateful that our truck is staying in Nairobi --more repairs-- for a few days, even though I know they will be joining it on the other side of Masai Mara. The idea of watching our people --albeit greatly depleted in numbers-- driving off in our truck would be hard to take; I can just imagine trying to hold back that flood which longs to carry you out the door waving and shouting "Wait! Wait for me!" If you think it is strange that I am so attached to a truck, and to my few remaining friends inside, then you have never done overlanding.

I'd like to say I didn't cry, that I smiled bravely and waved them off, unaffected by the bone-crushing hugs and the faces of Denford, the boys, and my dear maddening seat-mate --who I have been sitting beside for 52 days-- as he laughs and says "I'm so choked up, I can't even thinking of anything disgusting to say!" Then they are gone, and we are still waving, finally turning back towards the camp and repacking my bag for the 1500th time. Sure, I could say I didn't cry, but would you believe me?

We arrived in Nairobi 2 nights ago, through a haze of honking, bleating, screaming trucks, diesel fumes and men in dark glasses patrolling the highways, trying to sell us stuffed toys, holding up their wares to the truck windows and mouthing something we cannot hear, but even so we know means, "Good price, sister! My friend, for you good price!" Even now, after the touristy Tanzania and comparably wealthy Kenya I am still overwhelmed just by the prospect of a city, let alone one commonly referred to as "Nai-Robbery". But what does that mean? Who creates these names, and their mostly insulting spin-offs? After all, I liked Dar es Salaam (Dar-Is-A-Slum), and on our first night in Nairobi we took taxis (such luxury) downtown and ate at an Italian restaurant (we had a table! and napkins!) and the streets were well lit and a club nearby was blasting the same terrible music you would find playing at home, and I was happy.

I am not naive enough to suggest that all the stories you have heard are false and actually this place is all fine and dandy, but I am coming to realize that you can either look for the best in a city, country, or god forbid continent, or you can look for the worst. I sometimes get the alarming sensation, listening to other tourists talk, that there are people who go away solely to look down on things which are not them, or theirs. Others are just so sure they are going to find something negative they can't help but find it. I guess it is easy to judge, to criticize, and never have I found people (or tourists, I should say) so eager to do so as in Africa. Why?

I think the problem here --as the rest of the world is concerned-- on this continent is that no one really knows anything about it. For instance, there are 53 countries in Africa. How many can you name, place, or recall anything about? I don't ask this to embarrass you, after all, I have the worst sense of geography imaginable (ironically) and couldn't place the provinces of Canada for you on a map, without considerable effort. But how do you travel to a place you only know from devastating news reports, racist and prejudicial history and The Lion King?

Wherever we go we can't help but have some imagine in our mind, an image constructed from all we have seen or heard or imagined; it does not have to be true, or correct or deliberate, but deep down we are always looking for "that place" as we expected to find it, and there is just a twinge of disappointed when you cannot find it. I guess we always inventing, designing and building our experience into a reality we can live with. The danger, perhaps, is in the retelling?

Kwa Heri, my dears, go well. I will miss you.

N.