Once you're there...

Now that I've finished posting about our trip to Moshi, I can start blogging about more current events. For example, some of the piping in Dar's water system broke yesterday, and now the entire city is without running water and will be indefinitely, as far as we know. We have been assured that the problem is being worked on and that water will return soon, but in the event that its reappearance isn't as timely as we'd like, I am in no real trouble seeing as I only take real showers every 5-6 days now (you think I'm kidding...THAT'S funny, because I'm not). :)

But waterless showers aside, I did want to share a few things I have been thinking about the past few weeks. In the event that the university's electricity was also off all day a few weeks ago, a few of us went to see a movie at Mlimani Cinema. After the movie was over, it was so funny to think about how easily watching the movie made me forget I was even in Africa and how countless times since coming here I have had moments where I feel like I'm sitting in on a Hollywood film rather than actually living a study abroad reality.

That got me thinking how frighteningly persuasive and powerful the imagination created by movies really is, how it's so close to the real thing that when you actually are in the real thing, it doesn't even seem to be real because it's so much like the movies. But most of that is in relation to setting and geography and sometimes people. So much more of the experience on a human level is not capable of being replicated in entertainment media.

You just cannot convey the range of emotions that are cascading nonstop every day, whether it's humor at kids, relaxation in the sun and with the view, fear of the dark and threat of theft, awkwardness in entering a room and automatically becoming the center of both positive and negative attention because of both your skin color and gender, triumph after answer greeting questions correctly in Swahili then a total 180 degree turn to a more deer-in-headlights sensation when – assuming now that you know Kiswahili – the person keeps asking you questions and repeating them until you pathetically answer, “Sijui Kiswahili sana (I don't speak much Kiswahili),” missing home and your family but loving every minute of being here, pining for familiarity but knowing once you have it back you will ache for the exotic unknown, trusting in that which you cannot see but forgetting to look for reminders that it's still there on a daily basis. These are the chaotic ingredients that are constantly stirring throughout my entire being, and it's very confusing at times. A lot of the time, actually. Trying to figure out or put into words or just even understand what I should feel, what I want to feel and what I do feel. You cannot pay someone to act that out because it's not something you can physically see; it's all on the inside. As a writer, getting what I'm feeling down on paper really helps, but you can't just pretend and feel it – it only happens once you're really here, living it, and there's no rewind button to take you back to the way you used to be.