Tea

I want tea. Though I’m kinda avoiding it because I know I’ll take another cup at night. But it’s raining. And the hills around here are covered with clouds. A newcomer entering the town wouldn’t even see the hills since they are covered by dense rain falling.

But this moment is perfect for a cup of tea. Or maybe it’s the book I’m reading. Set along the coast of Tanzania back in the early days of the 20th century, it takes one through the coastal culture without meaning to.

The afternoons when people sleep in then wake up to go back to work. It seems weird that such a work schedule existed and yet it did and still does in some areas.

Speaking of work schedules, I don’t know what life has in store for me, but moments like this remind me that I’m lucky to some extent. That I can be seated here, worry free, on a Wednesday afternoon, listening to the rain, with a book in my hand, wondering whether to drink tea now or later.

It’s the kind of life I see myself living forever, with only a change of location. And yet this wasn’t planned. This move into this pristine location that always looks like a vacation in pictures. It just happened, albeit with a lot of resistance from me at first.

Isn’t it weird how life sometimes pushes us where we will thrive, even if we get there scared, afraid, kicking legs and worried? But, even after proof after proof that life always works out, the fear is always there when choosing to trust life. What if my years just pass by?

The most weird thing about that question is the little fact that of all lifestyles I admire, the coasterian one has to be up there. I fell in love with Lamu the minute I saw it. And one of the markers of their lifestyle, is that life passes by. Especially the fishermen. They wake up, not knowing their fate, but trusting the ocean, and somehow, a whole lifetime passes by, day by day. Anxieties of life come and go. Children come and go. The ocean brings excited visitors who come and go.

Kinda also makes sense why Yvonne Adhiambo’s second book-The Dragonfly Sea, is one of my favorite books from Africa. My God!! Didn’t that woman pen down a book! It was and still is the kind of book that made me appreciate the fact that I was alive at a time like that. At a moment like that. When I could open a page and be serenaded by a story so brilliantly told, that to date my heart beats a little faster each time I think about it.

Books. Stories. Travel.

Generally I would say that I haven’t trusted life. For a long time. There was always a part of me that saw and still sees it’s futility. Dust to dust. And in the middle there, joy and sorrow. And for some of us that experienced more sorrows than joy growing up, the gray kinda never leaves.

But well told stories make me glad to be alive at this moment. Everything holds still as a good story seeps into my being. Stories are like the sun that my life was given, that regardless of how life went, my whole being would light up when told a story. It’s like the lamp that never goes off in me.

And so maybe I’ll have that tea. In solidarity with my characters in this book that has so pleased my soul.

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