There is a point when you are first on your way to Africa that you panic, or at least I did. Somewhere over the Midwest perhaps, your tongue gets thick (think cow tongues bloated and wet). It fills your mouth, circles your molars tracing the cavity gravestones, working through the flesh on the roof of the mouth. The back of your throat dries and slowly slowly you grip the seat. Suddenly the magnanimity of the reality starts to work into you. Slow at first; a suitcase somewhere in storage below, a suitcase above you in the overheard. An orange juice on the tray table in front of you; friends are doing real things with their lives. Next to you suits, smiling faces, a man sleeping glasses falling down nose. Where are the other people going? Perhaps on holiday to see friends, or for work, newspaper reading man certainly for work. Faster than this knowledge grips on, no clear return planned no idea who you will meet on landing. Africa, more a dream than a reality slowly and painfully wrought into reality sickly and screaming with each inevitable mile whipped over by a lazy jet in fall.
Years later, sickness from the trip on occasion brings forth those reminiscent malaria hazed afternoons. This time stuck in another foreign country unfriendly people. The slow realization that you cannot really leave Africa. The physical act of course already long done, but somewhere in you you never leave. Going back to Africa then, the terrible speed of adrenaline pumping through your veins. The confidence this decision give you is great. Gin and lemon soda on the shore watching the day. Pain in the eyes of them people (we wait for food), pain in sickness(I wait for it to pass). What have we to worry about my friend except for deaths inevitable and careful review. Oh the memories! Sticky in the afternoon sun, at night too cold to cry out. The sands whipping through the desert and leaving nothing the same for even a blink. Africa, where school has no bearing anyways, and merit is based on, well. Yes back to Africa, back to Africa it cannot be helped you see.
She did not love me I suppose, or enough to want to be with me more. What else can I do.
Back to the sands, the terror, the roars, the shine of flesh, the smell of the birth in the long reeds by the river; back to the certain embrace of the early evening reaper... I am lost I am lost, and Africa pulls every bone.
