JFK International Airport, New York
We’ve been traveling for thirty-three hours now, having left the Maasai Mara at ten-thirty Kenyan time yesterday to journey to Nairobi, and then to begin our long trip home.
At this point, exhaustion and patience compete with one another. The layover here is six hours; some of our team ventured into NYC for a few hours while waiting for the flight, a few others were able to score seats on an earlier flight, and a handful of us remain waiting here. William, who has a fever, is sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor next to me.
The gradual breakdown and separation of our team continues a trend that began in Nairobi. Nate and John, the documentary film team that accompanied us, left us at the airport, as did Madeline, who is remaining in Kenya for another two weeks to visit with her sister. We left Kitty behind too: she’s beginning a year’s stay in Nairobi and will be working at Beacon of Hope.
Here at this airport today we’ve lost several more, and soon enough it will be time for us to leave the few who have a later flight still, and begin the last leg of our journey home.
Travel like this confuses things. During travel, the sun’s place in the sky depends entirely on where we are rather than what time it is, but time is irrelevant, as we are moving through so many time zones. The airline feeds us according to the time of our destination rather than the time we’re accustomed to, so that they were feeding us “dinner” last night at 2 a.m. Calculating how many hours we’ve been in transit is confusing: we set out at ten a.m. Kenyan time; it is now 1:02 EST; there is a seven hour difference between the two.
Add to all of this the slightly muddled perspective of exhaustion, the sorrow of something good coming to an end, the slow and definite ebb of our numbers, and I find that this waiting is a time I’d just as soon see come to an end. This part is definitely Not Fun.
And of course often– so often– I am calculating the time in Kenya, remembering how the evening sunlight filtered through the trees at Musmark.
Last Sunday we began packing at Musmark. We packed what we would need for the shorter week ahead and left the rest in storage until our return on Friday. I found myself even then thinking of Places in the Heart, the movie for which Sally Field won an Academy Award back in (was it?) 1983. Her character works all night in the cotton field, trying to be the first to get her cotton to the gin so that she can win some prize money– and this money would keep her from having to send her children away.
When she finally falls into her bed in exhaustion, she dreams she is dancing with her (now deceased) husband– and when she wakes and begins the daily movements of the day, the music that accompanied their dancing continues to play in her head. It plays as she fixes her hair. It plays as she puts water on to boil. It plays as she puts cornbread in the over.
Her boarder sits at the kitchen table shelling peas, and he speaks to her– the mild comments of morning banter. But the woman- for whom the music continues to play- does not answer.
He calls her by name. The music stops. She smiles at nothing– the dream in her mind. “I was remembering a dream,” she says.
In a few hours I will be home again, and I know how it will be when we get there: the unravelling of our things, the piles of laundry by the machine, the heat that starts before 8 a.m. There will be my house, my cat, my bed. And friends and family we have missed– and we will be safely home.
But I won’t want to enter it right away. I won’t want to check my e-mail or read people’s blogs. I won’t want just So Soon to answer the phone or even to see other people. Not Quite Yet, no. I will be dreaming of Africa.
