I check-in and we sit down on the twin beds. We order room service, which I find strange; even in Canada I have never ordered room service. We eat chicken sandwiches and fries and juice and lay back and comment on what high-rollers we are. Ben hops in the shower and I turn on the television. This place is some kind of fancy. When he emerges from the shower, he is a different man. His hair is light and combed and he’s wearing a collared shirt he’d been saving for the flight home that I’ve never seen before. As he sits on the bed, I stare at him and think “who are you?” he smiles and I say he looks like a posher.
We watch some crappy 80’s movie and mock the terrible acting and general unattractiveness of the lead actors. We flip through magazines. I state and re-state that I will not survive without him. I am really dreading his departure now. I feel like I’m about to write an exam that I’m not prepared for. I feel sad, like my best friend is moving away the day before 5th grade.
I walk over and sit on my bed. The room is silent. I flip through a magazine and talk to myself and plan my day. I take a shower and then I leave the hotel. I wander down the road, talking to people on the street and I end up at an internet café. I start writing my Kilimanjaro blog and log into msn. I wish someone would reply, but it’s 4am. Then my mom logs in and says that she woke up and heard me wishing that she’d get on the computer. Sometimes unexplainable connections just are what they are and ours has become something that I can rely on. I tell her I am lonely here and I’m really glad she’s online. We talk for a few hours and then it’s dark and I have to get back to my hotel.
I drag my feet the entire way and look at the trees and the stars. I order room service and watch a terrible B movie on TV. It reminds me of that movie “Eurotrip” where the man in Bratislava says “Miami Vice, number one new show!” Africa is about 20 years behind us in the entertainment department as well. I have no books to read, I have my ratty, bulging journal, that I read over and over and doodle in and write poetry. I finally fall asleep with a pen in my hand and the television playing a movie about killer sharks in the background.When I wake, I plan to spend the day at the internet café, writing about Kilimanjaro. I figure this will kill time and keep me occupied. I shower and give myself a good scrubbing with the shampoo and shower gel that Ben left for me. I put on my Kili shirt and fresh pants and feel healthy and alive. I have a continental breakfast and head out.
I am halfway through my blog when the power goes out. Damn it! I go to the store next door and buy a tub of ice cream (and I mean TUB!) and a fanta and head back to my room. Brownouts are pretty common and I think the power will be on again in a few minutes. Ha ha wrong! Then the generator at the hotel quits. Let me tell you, I have never been so bored in my LIFE! I talk to myself. I sing songs. I start writing haikus about my hotel room. I make a sign that says “I miss Ben’s beard” and sit in front of the mirror making every facial expression that I can think of. I stretch. I dance. This is Kelly’s boredom on crack.
I write about how great it will be to return home. How I can’t wait to see my family and give gifts and show photos. I try not to think about going back to school and my daily routine and leaving this place that has taught me so much. 10pm comes. I get in the taxi and once again, I don’t look back.
I talk to the taxi driver. I use my Swahili and he uses his English and we get each other’s life stories in a 20min nutshell. He tells me where his family is from and he’s been driving a taxi for 12 years and he doesn’t have any children. I tell him about Canada and the cold and the snow and school and the skytrain. He says Canada sounds so hard to believe and I say “man, you’re tellin me!” and he’s all smiles and happy eyes. I tell him I can’t believe I’m leaving this place. He looks at me and says that for all the tourists he’s seen in Dar and all the travelers he’s known, he’s never had the desire to leave Tanzania. Finally, I feel like that’s something that I can understand.
The night is cold and I buy a Chukka to wrap around myself on the plane and a few books to read. They’re all about Africa, of course. As I’m waiting to board the plane, I feel like I’m holding back a huge wave of sadness. I am so different. I am not someone who is meant to stay in North America. I know that I am leaving a place that I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to return to. I wrap my chukka around me and pull my legs to my chest and feel smaller than when I arrived. I want to run out into the night and tear up my ticket and return to Singida and live there, basking in the warmth of strangers and the satisfaction of owning nothing. I stand in line, waiting to board the flight.
I write as I’m sitting on the plane, with the whirrs and hums of pressurization and the dim overhead lights. This is it. Goodbye Tanzania. Goodbye Swahili on my lips, holding hands with strangers, children playing with my hair. I feel a sense of heartache and loss spread through my chest. Oh the tragedy of leaving your great fresh paradise. The wonder I have discovered in the world. I have helped deliver babies, cuddled street children, fed starving puppies, built a school, climbed a mountain, swam the sea, felt earthquakes and tornadoes and saw poisonous snakes and the fear of bees and frogs that appear in the shower as if from nowhere! I watched elephants fight and saw a man beaten within an inch of his life and felt the rain warm on my skin and the sand hot under my feet. I felt the wind and snow atop Kilimanjaro and the air, thin in my lungs. I have thought new thoughts, seen new sights, read and written new words. This has truly been a journey of self-discovery. This is something that not even the most expensive HDTV could give you. This is life.
I have tested my limits and found new comfort in the mystery of this world. Whatever happens in my life, wherever the road takes me; I have done this. This summer existed and I was here. I have learned enough not to last a lifetime, but to begin one. I am returning a new person to an old home. I now see that life can be whatever you want it to be and whether or not you fit into society or are successful doesn’t matter. There is an entire world out there, so far removed from where we started. Time is precious, palpable and subjective. Above all things, time is the currency of our existence. Spending it wisely, on things that truly matter, is the only way to ensure that it won’t run out too fast. Lead a life worth living. Don’t waste one second on unhappiness. That is what I have learned in Africa. How I spent my youth rebelling seems so ridiculous now. There is nothing to rebel against. You can change everything in your entire life in a heartbeat, no one or one thing external to yourself will ever be able to control you or decide your future unless you let it.
My parents and brother meet me at the airport. Layovers included, I have been awake for almost three days. I stumble through the gate in a daze, hauling my luggage, wrapped in a plaid chukka. Everything feels surreal, like I’m under water. They wrap me in a hug and I’m so glad to see them. They brought me sushi from my favourite restaurant and red Gatorade, which was what I was craving when I was sick on Kilimanjaro. We walk to a table and I eat. I can’t even eat half of the sushi, I just have no appetite. I don’t know what to say. Where do I begin? What do I tell them? I talk about the flight and my words fall out of my mouth in a slurred, exhausted “whoosh” My brother and dad carry my bags and it feels so strange to me. I let Ben carry my bag once in Stone Town, only after he asked me about a hundred times if he could take one of my bags did I finally give in. There’s something to be said for pulling your own weight and I feel awkward, not carrying my things as we walk to the car.
I don’t sleep that first night back. I don’t know how to shut off my brain and I sit on the computer until 5am. It takes me two weeks to get back into a regular sleep cycle and I don’t sleep more than 4 hours a night. I spend a lot of time alone. I feel like I’m not sure where to pick up my life back home. Who do I phone first? What do I say? So much has happened and I just can’t summarize what I did in Africa in one conversation. “How was it?” “Awesome, best time of my life” is all I say.
When people ask me why I decided to just go, I tell them that it’s just where I wanted to be. I tell them that if you want to go somewhere or see something during your lifetime, just show up. I feel lucky, because I think we’re a particularly miserable bunch, here in North America. I think we are so unhappy because we equate happiness with goals and with the future. We say things like “I can’t wait to get this new car” or “one day I’ll have a family, a house, a new job and then my life will be good” but we have forgotten how to just BE happy with what we have in our day to day lives. It’s not a new car or a house or a shiny TV. Happiness is the most simplistic thing on the planet. It’s easy to equate it with the momentary gratification of acquiring material possessions because we’re living in an affluent society where it’s easy to keep that cycle going. But we rely on that momentary gratification too much. We don’t think about how happy we are when we’re walking down the street and the sun is shining or someone smiles at us at the store. I think about my childhood a lot. I try to remember what made me happy before I knew the value of a dollar or the idea of a career. I try to live my life by the standard I set for myself when someone asked me “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
My heroes have always been people who have marched to the beat of their own drums. Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac, Chris McCandless. As a kid, I didn’t place value on people according to status, I valued people with exciting stories and that sparkle in their eyes. We spend a lot of time justifying why we aren’t the people we wanted to be when we were young. That car or house or shiny new TV is what we have decided to spend our money and time on. That mortgage that we’re still paying for is the reason that a lot of us haven’t seen the pyramids or volunteered at a hospital.
What is the point? I mean really? How often do we look at our lives and really see who we are and what we’ve done? That corny question of what your eulogy would read really is worth answering. If it says “he didn’t get out much, but by golly he finally did own that house!” then maybe it’s time to think about doing something crazy. There is no valid reason for wasting a life or for being dissatisfied with who you are as a person. That’s how I want to live. That’s the person that I want to be. I hope I die with a million stories in my head and not a dime in my pocket and knowledge that I was as happy as I could have been with what I had in front of me.
