Safe and Sound

The good news is all my flights were on time and my luggage was waiting for me at the end of a long journey along with the driver who would take me to Jinja. The bad news? I wouldn’t say it went off without a hitch. I was so tired when I landed in Amsterdam (1am, Vancouver time) that the thought of going into the city, reading my book or even watching Top Gear on my computer was just too much. I wandered the airport for a bit, just exploring, and happened upon a couple clusters of loungers placed in a dim, quiet corner of the airport; that was all the invitation I needed and slept on and off for a couple hours. That’s when things went horribly wrong. My stomach began to tell me things I did not want to hear. The only thing that I can think of that would have caused what came next is bad airplane “food”, because, my gosh, that stuff was horrendous. The next few hours of my day were spent holed up in an airport bathroom stall throwing up. So, there I was, curled up in the fetal position on the floor of a public bathroom stall, my head leaned against my backpack trying to sleep between bouts of vomiting…isn’t travelling romantic? The only thing that made it tolerable was how grateful I was that I did have such a long layover (12 hours) and that this situation wasn’t played out in a much smaller bathroom stall 20,000 feet in the air. Once I came out of the bathroom, I was still back and forth numerous times, just with lesser frequency and by the grace of God, the last time I threw up was about a half hour before the gate opened for my next flight; a red-eye to Nairobi. As much as I did not enjoy Amsterdam, there were two little gifts that came with my next flight that made everything else easy to forget. First, I had a window seat and the seat beside me was empty, affording me an extra pillow and much more room so stretch out to sleep; the second is a wonderful new friend named Sabia. We ended up beside each other walking through the gate and I struck up a conversation given that she was a young women travelling alone, as was I. We had the same connecting flight to Entebbe as well, affording us a chance to get to know each other between flights. She’s 24, from New York, in the midst of a 27 month term with the Peace Corps and is working in a village about 4 hours from me. We’ll both be here for the next year or so, so we exchanged emails and parted with the intention of visiting one another sometime within that time frame.

Stepping out of the plane in Nairobi, I was hit with a memory that the 7 years since Namibia has done nothing to diminish…the unmistakeable smell of Africa; earthy and sweet. Throughout my flights, there were definite moments of sadness, fear, uncertainty, but the strange thing was that after reaching approximately the halfway mark, it really felt less like getting further from home and more like getting closer to home. In fact, for the first 15 or so minutes of the crazy drive into Jinja, I found myself unconsciously repeating such a sentiment in my head…”I’m home…” Well that, with the addition of Bob Marley’s One Love weaving randomly in and out of my thoughts.

I am literally falling asleep at my computer as I haven’t slept much since Monday night so I will save my first impressions of Ekisa and conclude with a few things that have astounded me, amazed me or were simply too interesting not to share.

The speed of an airplane (8??-9?? Mph)…How small and insignificant you feel in an airplane…How gassy people are (realized after such a prolonged amount of time spent in a public bathroom)…African road rules, or lack-there-of…finding a pile of postcards my friends had written encouraging notes on and my roommate had stuffed in my suitcase; I have amazing friends…and finally…monkey road kill.