A Return to Random Reverie In Six Parts

one

I am daydreaming about bubble baths. About having my entire body submerged in hot water. I am daydreaming about the perfect shower. These are things I did not think about before. I can perfectly remember my routine; pouring over-priced bath oil into the steaming water and watching the way the oil created small bubbles and filled the bathroom with the scent of eucalyptus and frankincense. I think about how the bathtub would perfectly fit my body, fully submerged head to toe, nearly scalding hot water permeating my skin. But today, I am standing in my chooni — bathroom — which is just a small, concrete open-air room behind my house. I am using a pail to scoop scolding hot water from a bucket to pour over my tired body. After a long day and a hard workout, the hot water is the perfect antidote to sore muscles. The rain is falling, and I am laughing and daydreaming about bubble baths and normalcy and showering without sandals on. A few weeks back I was in Dar es Salaam. At the hotel, I took a shower, and perhaps for the first time since I arrived here, I experienced the perfect shower. And by this, I mean, the water was hot, the pressure was phenomenal, the bathroom was clean, and I had a fresh white towel to dry off with if I ever actually got out of the shower. We like to joke that you either get hot water and no pressure or a lot of pressure and bone-chilling water. And so here I am, standing in my little choo enjoying yet another hot bucket bath, and I’m not sure I’d have it any other way.

two

I have a new roommate. About two months ago I bought a custom-built sofa for my house. And yes, by custom-built, I mean that I can lay down and my entire body fits without touching either end. A few days after I bought said sofa, I noticed little pieces of chewed up foam littered around the back corner. I supposed some little mouse had found its way in and gorged on poison sofa foam. And then, nothing. I figured he’d had his fill and moved on. I was traveling for the last three weeks and returned home this past weekend. There is something strange and curious about living so close to nature. My home seems to be alive. There are the spiders, of course, who weave their webs into the corners and along the forgotten crevasses. They are welcomed guests unless of course, they are bigger than a quarter and hairy, then its warfare. Then there are the lizards. So many lizards. They mostly stay outside, much preferring the warmth of my corrugated tin roof. But they also frequent the rafters inside my house, dropping little pieces of shit. Might sound less than ideal, but I figure they’re the reason I have no major bug issues; so, I don’t mind them at all. And so, I returned to my house and one of the first nights back I saw my new roommate scurry across the floor towards the back door. Then, later that night I went out to the bathroom, and as I stepped into the dark space something scurried past my feet. I may or may not have screamed. The next day my rockstar of a counterpart, Augustino, came over to help me with some stuff around the house and I told him I thought I had a mouse. He took one look at the shit behind my sofa laughed and said, panya — rat. I suppose the mice and rats are different in Tanzania. I personally chose to take this as a stamp on my New Yorker card, that I thought a rat was a mouse; Augustino has clearly never seen the rats in the New York City subway or he would have understood. And so it is, I have a new roommate who is slowly eating my couch and I now get a lot of laughs as I tell people, nina panya ndani nyumbani kwangu, amekula sofa yangu yote, sasa ameshiba sana amechibongo — I have a rat inside of my house, he ate my entire sofa, now he is very full and very fat.

three

Last Sunday I had to travel from Morogoro back to Same. Traveling in Tanzania is a wildly ridiculous, and chaotic at times, patience cultivating activity. Throsby, Anna and I arrived at the bus station in Morogoro around 9:15 a.m., approximately 15 minutes after the last bus left for Same. As we got a lecture about sleeping to late from some ticket salesman, we were told to follow him, and he began to run away from the station. We all ran after him and caught up with a bus that was going to Mombo, which is the town before Same, in other words, our best bet for getting to Same that day. I squeezed myself onto a tiny sliver of a seat in the very back of the bus, in between a large Maasai woman dressed in her traditional garb, and a woman about my age, who was wearing a knockoff Gucci tracksuit. There is no personal space on public transportation here, or really anywhere. People are always touching you, and rubbing up against you, and telling you to scoot over when there is no way a person could possibly fit onto the seat. As I sat down, I told the Maasai woman, sogeza — move, a very Tanzania thing for me to do. She looked at me and said, wapi? — where? I responded with the same cheeky expression I am so often on the receiving end of. She couldn’t quite figure out how to feel about me. That was, of course, until I offered her some cashews and spoke Kiswahili. That, at least, alleviated the stink eye I was receiving, but she still wasn’t pleased with my taking up four inches on this seat. As for Throsby and Anna, they were sitting on buckets, so I suppose I got the better end of the bargain. Meanwhile, the rain was relentless, and eventually, it began to fall through the ceiling onto the young woman and me, we laughed, and I said, inanyesha ndani — it’s raining inside. We laughed together and she scooted over a bit, so I’d have more room. When you are living in a place with such a lack of physical personal space, you learn to find the space within yourself. You must. You find patience, or else… I don’t know, but I do know that in these moments I dig deep into myself and find humor and I relentlessly choose to tilt my head back, letting the rainfall on my face inside the bus and laugh.

As we arrived at Korogwe, the bus station about two hours from Mombo, we were told we had to deboard, and that another bus was going to be arriving soon. And thus, we learned two important Tanzanian travel lessons. One, when your travel stops, you should begin to worry. Two, never pay for a bus ticket before you see the bus. We were, perhaps, too tired to be worried at first. And so, we bought bus tickets for the bus that was apparently coming. We proceeded to sit at the stendi for four hours. The rain getting harder by the hour, the cold air beginning to cause goosebumps to creep across my perpetually wet skin. I felt I hadn’t been dry in days. All of us keeping our resolve, we tried to stay encouraged that the bus had to come eventually. Meanwhile we played with this little boy, probably about seven years old. He was dressed in a two-piece kitenge ensemble, with his mama’s kitenge wrapped around his head for warmth. We played hide and seek, hiding ourselves in the myriad damp fabrics we had wrapped around our cold bodies. We tickled each other. Whenever a bus (not our bus, of course) rolled into the stendi he joined the young men who try to sell goods to passengers and he ran along with them screaming, maji soda maji soda karanga — water soda water soda peanuts, otherwise known as the stendi mantra. He had an endless reservoir of energy and laughter. His playful energy was infecting, even as the adults began to grow increasingly concerned about how we would all get out of Korogwe. Eventually, I lifted him onto my lap and wrapped my kitenge around the both of us. I sang the Gayatri Mantra quietly, and his little body just sank into mine. He grew quiet, staring off into space, sharing his warmth with me. I thought about how desperately I wanted to hold my own child like this one day. That, of course, is a topic for another time, but I do know that the sheer joy and playful energy that children bring is the antidote to anything, be it rain or warfare.

four

So, every day, were you to walk through Mvaa, you would surely pass the raucous group of vijana — young/adolescents — that drive their motorcycles day in and day out to make money. They are lively, wild, rambunctious, overflowing with that teenage boy energy that I believe translates all time, space and language. They show off, they make fun of each other, they take part in risky behaviors that are all too familiar. And let me say, these are not teenagers, they are almost all in their twenties, but that teenage boy energy seems to know no sense of time. There is a Neverland-esque nature to the way these young men live their lives. Largely without parental supervision, without the worry of what tomorrow might bring, a constant presence in the immediate moment. Perhaps avoiding, all together, the thought about what it might mean to grow up.

And then there is me, the twenty-six-year-old woman from America, now living in their village, frequenting their locales, and making fun of them and shooting the shit with them. And I don’t think they quite know what to make of me. Yesterday I was sitting on the bench under the tree, where they all take shelter from the afternoon sun. We laughed and talked about traveling and what America is like. Two of the young guys told me they had never left Mvaa. And, of course, I should not be surprised by this. But I could not help but wonder what it might be like to have such a world view, such a sense of your place in this world? Imagine not knowing what the Eiffel Tower is? Imagine not knowing about the Sahara Desert? Not being able to call to mind imagines of all the spectacular places in the world? Of course, I understand that the ability to travel and see the world is an enormous privilege. One that I strive to never take for advantage. Education is a privilege, although it should not be. It should be a human right. The ability to have upward mobility in this world should be a right as well. These young guys should have these options. The option of something other than this, a likely dead end, high-risk job with little payoff. I could easily become quite tangential about the way all of these issues lead back to the right of a good education, but I digress. I listen to them telling me that they are scared to get on the buses, and they are scared of too many people. And I can’t blame them. The world is sometimes an unforgiving place. I thought the other day about how generous life is when we allow it to be, and as I speak to these guys, I can’t help but wonder if it is generous to all?

All the while, as I am chatting with the vijana, next to me is a woman who is one hundred years old, a new word I learned recently — centenarian. As I watch the way her back curves and her delicate hands that remind of my grandmother’s cradle the walking stick, it hits me. This woman was born in 1919, or around then. I’m sure there are no official records. But nonetheless, trying to stretch my mind to imagine life in this village in 1919 proves nearly impossible. And perhaps life is generous to all of us in very different and complexly individual ways. And so, perhaps, I learn again or continue to learn, that the way I live my life, the wants and needs I have, the desires I have for the type of life I want to cultivate, the beliefs I have about the world, they are not universal. They are not right. They are not wrong. No one really needs to know what I think. And no one needs to agree with me. I need not convince anyone. I can simply be, and listen, and trust that we are all part of something much larger than any fleeting moment of time.

five

Back in April, I asked my sisters to send me a little care package. I asked for sage, to cleanse my new home here. And, as life is wont to do, they got busy, and it took them a while to send the package. And by awhile, I mean I just received it this week. But you know what? It was exactly the right time. And not once did I grow impatient with them, because I knew this little sacred parcel would bring me exactly what I needed when I needed it. And thus, on Monday afternoon Throsby picked up the package from the posta in Same. He gave it to Youze, the driver of Kikwesha. And then Youze brought it to me here in Mvaa. I tucked it carefully in to my backpack and continued my day. When I arrived home, I sat at my desk. I took a deep breath, and with each item, I felt my heart swell and hot tears rolling down my cheeks. Sage, cedar, palo santo, essential oils, tea tea and more tea, and crystals and more crystals, and letters. As I held these letters in my hands, I could feel my hand holding their hands. I thought about how connected we are despite thousands of miles. Joanna, drinking her wine and writing to me, she said,

“I’m sitting in Juliette right now, with a glass of Côtes de Rhône and some pomme frites. I’m having a Tyler and Joanna Williamsburg day minus you. It is nice to frequent the places we’ve been to. It’s like I can feel the traces of you in each place and each memory. Each one special and magical all it's own.”

And I think about those I love so dearly, visiting the memory of me in places I have somehow already forgotten. I think about how the memories of our beautiful lives, the moments of overwhelming joy and pain and love and invigoration, live on in the spaces that we leave behind. I cannot help but think him, perhaps purposefully revisiting places we once frequented. Croissants and coffee and tacos and the perfect cocktails. Or perhaps accidentally finding himself on some street corner and a memory coming, flooding back into his mind, or perhaps more so, his heart. And I wonder what it means that I cannot physically frequent these places too. That I am here, in this place. Raw and exposed, creating new memories in new corners of the world. Perhaps the most perfect and most trying aspect of this experience is how deeply individual it is. How there is no option to escape myself. No option to hide from my thoughts, my fears, my doubts and shame. Yesterday I was walking through the forest and as I inhaled the humid air, I thought about all of the things that brought me into this exact moment. Not just on this day. But in my lifetime. All of it. It has all added up to this, me, alone, walking through the forest in Tanzania, living a dream, something I wouldn’t have dared even speak out loud before. And I am here, and I am learning to frequent the corners of my spirit that used to seem off-limits. I am learning to dig deep, so that seventeen short months from now, I can return to these restaurants and bars and street corners and places filled with memory and spirit and love, and I can be there again, as if for the first time. Raw, refreshed and ready.

six

And then there are the things that are utter perfection. When I find a perfectly ripe papaya in my village, a rarity, but so very decadent when they appear. When I found a Krest tonic water at my favorite duka in Same. When I buy an avocado and its absolute perfection. The perfection of a chapati that is just the right size, just the right crunchy and the right soft, a little salt but just enough. The feeling I get every morning when I make my coffee, the routine of opening the Ziploc bag, inhaling deeply the sweet earthy scent, carefully placing two heaping spoon fulls into my French press. Isn’t it strange how we intuitively always know how much coffee to put in our cups? Imagine if we were so sure and exacting about the rest of our lives. And then there’s the perfection of the kind of day I had yesterday, perfect in all its pain pleasure and imperfection. I wept and allowed myself to cry out, loud. The heavy rainfall giving me the much need cover I need to fully express. How does the rain always know? And I sat and watched the rain and cried for everything and nothing. And then I took that scolding hot bucket bath. As I dried myself off, I heard my neighbor knocking on my door. In my ridiculously patterned bathrobe and a kitenge haphazardly wrapped around my body, my hair akimbo, I answered. And then there is this, the perfection of a six-minute conversation in Kiswahili and I understood every single word he said and he, at least I think, understood every word I said. My day ended with clean hair, a good book, a ripe papaya, and a cup of tea sent from a world away. And on it goes.