Lau de Bugs
journal
dev
1I am here now again
I’ve woken up early. My body had been used to getting up and going somewhere. Every day I had something to do, someone to see, some place to be – but yesterday I got back to the life I had put on hold for several weeks to immerse myself into a more familiar one of my childhood and early adulthood. There’s a sense in which I had left my home in New York to run towards something I already knew back home in Kenya – the places I had been, the people, the food, the air – a more comfortable, easy, and less demanding life. While at home in Nairobi, I was very much unaware of the question of how I fit in, or where I belong, but rather slipped back into a sense of being that I understood. And now that I’m back to the big apple, there’s an admission that I don’t know how to do life right by myself – estranged from the familiar. I worry that it isn’t as easy to make long-lasting friendships. If I am to build my life here, the need to belong, to be seen by those around me, to matter is as much a necessity as it is a thing that requires work that at times becomes exhausting. The allure of retreating, of giving in to the sense of being alone can grow stronger and mightier by the day. How does one exist with a detachment from those who are closest to you; when whatever one does may go unseen, unrecognized and to do that in a society can feel like it simply doesn’t care can breed a sense hopelessness.
How easy it was to walk back into an old life, to pick up the pieces, to reconnect with old friends. The food tasted the way I remember it – motherly. Caramelized onions littered the wooden spatula dripping saucy soup from the chunks of chicken stew and landing squarely on the smoking hot heavenly ugali. Salutations turned into unplanned conversations with neighbors talking in unrefined tongues with tones of their upbringing dotting their speech. They smelled like earth, rust, Omo, Elianto. Family and friends always smile at me. Passersby look at me like they know that I am up to no good. On my way to wherever I’m going, fellow passengers seat a little too close for comfort next to me in the matatu, in silence but listening to whatever tune was playing in the matatu – Classic FM or a DJ mix preloaded onto a USB stick. No matter how gingerly I step, dust creeps up on me and the next time I glance down, it has formed layers on my sneakers as I take my morning run on a once untrodden but now tarmacked road leading up to the primary school I went to as a kid. The showers are cold as there’s no such thing as things always working. They break, often. My mother has a plumber over to fix the water heater and the next day there’s water leaking through the roof. The plumber returns to fix it again. It rains, actually rains – showers pouring in the middle of the night with lightening and thunder so much so that I wake up and listen to it for a few minutes. The lightning strikes down a pole and there’s no power at home for a few days. Things take time to happen, and people are accustomed to it – have developed a patience with the fact that very few things operate on schedule.
I am here now. Is this home again now? There is a wrath that this city brings with it and it is coming – where I will be convinced that I will have to walk, talk, work faster and at the height of it a crushing feeling that it is not okay to just sit in silence when there are so many things to be done, new TV shows to watch, restaurants to check out, events to go to, memes to share, trends to try out. I will become disillusioned by all this and will try to keep up and fail; will try to fill my calendar with things to do and places to be and things to try out. I read less these days, find it hard to curve out time to write. Days go by without taking stock of where my heart and spirit have wandered. Right at the very moment my flight touched down at JFK my mind went racing into all the things I need to catch up on, the work, people, events, never-ending to-dos. Lord, grant me the grace and patience to learn to live in the moment. There’s a church service in two hours and I need to do groceries, organize my room, reach out to friends. I’ve already been invited over for dinner. Lord, give me faith and the strength to turn my face toward you and lean on you for understanding, for hope, for peace when my heart wants to wander, want to give up, becomes restless. I am calculating how much time I have in order to finish this piece and then go do the next thing, then the next thing after that – everything must fit in to whatever little time I have in this day. Things cost twice as much, even three times more – but even this is an understatement of how I finance the cost of living in this city. I must be a bit mad to be okay with paying $6 or more for a cup of coffee. Inflation brings this up to about $8. Is this a necessary pleasure? To do things cost money and I have to check people’s calendars if I want to do most things with friends. Is this a necessary labor? Lord, show me how to love others, how to learn from them, and embrace their culture and being; open my eyes to the things that are of importance in my day to day. Tomorrow morning I am planning take my run, but I have a call scheduled before work and I want to do some reading as well and make coffee and breakfast and plan for lunch and dinner. It’s already beginning to sound overwhelming, but I am here now and let me begin reliving this life I have now come back to.