10.18

I spent the last three months in Sub Saharan Africa with Z. – almost all of that time in a little town called Tororo in Uganda, close enough to the Kenyan boarder that you could see the rain coming and say, “It’s raining in Kenya.”

I’ve returned to the US without Z. I’m in MPLS. Z. is in Tororo and I’ve been getting emails from her telling me how sad she is. I didn’t expect that. She has made choices in her life that have required that she be the only skipper of a lone boat.

How do I feel? Out of place. I was sick on the airplanes coming how. I started vomiting in Entebbe, Uganda and stopped three continents later in JFK, where I also lost my hat. I just turned around and it was gone. I had bought that hat with Z. in a little town in Mexico from an adorable woman in the market who demonstrated the hats ability to retain it’s shape after being crushed. She crushed it in her tiny hands and made her round face crush up at the same time. I bought the hat to protect me from the African sun.

It’s autumn in MPLS. Z. told me I would feel out of place when I came back and I had said “No. Especially not considering we had spent two weeks in South Africa before flying back to Uganda” (I got on a plane the next day bound for MPLS).

I am walking down the street. I try to remember the dirt roads in Tororo, the mud huts and the children, the market where I spent so much of my time walking around, sitting and talking with people as I drew their portraits with watercolor pencils. The two places are absolutely irreconcilable. Either they are two on different plants or this one planet is so much stranger that I had ever imagined.

Tomorrow I will start driving to Oregon. I don’t think I will make it all the way through South Dakota. My aim is to reach Rapid City by dark.