03 September 2008

The return

So I'm home now. Now that I have had some sleep, of that much I am certain. I’m still not sure of anything else, really. Everything feels different, though just how I remember it, nothing ever changes, everything predictable, reliable, as expected. This country can be so boring once you get used to the initial novelty of being here again.

Thanks to the lack of sleep over the last two days, the journey and arrival home seems rather like a dream, looking back. I got up early on the day of departure in order to bid my fellow volunteers goodbye. Everyone quickly disappeared off to their various placements; leaving me to go back to the cottage and finish packing my things, shower, chat to Peter and Vincent while they made lunch for everyone when they got back. Another newbie arrived about an hour before I left. Steph, an English nurse, terrified she was going to be the eldest volunteer, she was very cool and I spoke to her for a while about what to expect from her time in Kenya. I think we’d have got on like that dead millionaire’s house on fire, had she come a month earlier.

Katharine came back from her placement and we were off to the airport, taking care to say farewell to Rebecca, Peter, Vincent and Bryony as we bundled our luggage into the back of Bernard’s Corolla, leaving by the same means as we had arrived. Bernard was a lot more talkative than he was way back on our first arrival, and almost mowed down a pedestrian on his mobile on the way there.

I had tried to dress specifically so that I wouldn’t have to take much off to go through the metal detectors this time, Katharine too was happy that the check in guy didn’t make her pay the fifty-odd quid that she was supposed to for the truly epic weight of her souvenir laden bags.

She tried to sleep through most of the flight to Doha and I just tried to avoid watching the in flight movie ‘Speedracer’ by reading my book until we got to the middle-east. This time, I was prepared for the intense heat of Qatar, wearing a single layer of lightweight clothing and watching people ahead of me, who obviously weren’t prepared, step off of the plane wearing jackets and the like, melt and flow down the stairs and onto the, thankfully air conditioned terminal bus. It was dark and extremely hot and once again I was thankful that I didn’t have to experience how much hotter it would be at midday.

Qatar is a Muslim country and, as such, is doing the whole Ramadan thing right now, which also made me thankful it was dark. I was starving and it would be illegal to eat during daylight hours. The fast food counter cheerfully accepted pounds sterling, only they gave change in Qatari Riyals, which I worked out must have a value of around fifteen pence each.

We eventually decided to try and get some sleep in the airport’s quiet room as I had a five hour gap and Katharine had something like a twelve hour gap. The quiet room, we discovered was very poorly named. There was a guy snoring comically loudly and I could hardly believe it was a real snore it sounded so put on; a old woman with dementia or something, who started making some pretty odd and loud noises when her family tried to wake her up to leave; the public announcements continued every ten seconds to give final boarding warnings and as always there was a mother with a baby that seemed to forget that if you’re somewhere that requires you to be quiet and your baby starts crying, you should pick it up and PISS OFF SOMEWHERE ELSE YOU STUPID FUCK!!!!

My time was up and before I knew it, I was leaving Katharine behind to get to my plane. Even at 1 am it’s hotter outside here than Britain has ever been. The plane was another one of those huge ones with lots of complimentary stuff and a TV in the back of every seat. I spent most of my time watching ’10,000 BC’ (not amazing) and ‘Street Kings’ (bloody good) with the remainder of my time trying unsuccessfully to sleep for a while, eating god awful in flight meals and a very short time hitting on a hot hippy looking chick, trying to impress her with the volunteering work I’ve been doing only to find out that she’s been volunteering around the world non-stop for four years… “Okay, you win.”

Due to tiredness, I could no-longer perceive time at all, but if asked, I would estimate that I was waiting at the carousel for my bag for roughly seventeen years. I picked it up, realised there were no more available trolleys and made for the ‘nothing to declare’ exit.

“Hypothetically” I asked, “were I to have a hypothetical very large souvenir knife hypothetically in my bag right now, would I need to declare it?”

“Hypothetically… Yes sir.”

The grumpy, unwelcoming security guard at the ‘Declare your shit here’ desk greeted me with a look of ‘make me have to do any work and you’ll never be found’

“What have you got?” The taint of contempt was astonishing.

“I have a Masai hunting knife in my bag.”

He looked briefly at the bag, “Any fruit or veg?”

“Er… No.” I replied.
He said nothing further and gestured me through with his thumb, looking back at his paper. I quietly laughed, which drew one last stern look from the man before I hurried through the exit, praying that my Mother was here to pick me up and she hadn’t accidentally gone to Heathrow instead.

I was greeted back in Portsmouth by all of my housemates, torn between their happiness to see me again and their contempt for anyone who wakes them up before midday. I gave gifts, relaxed for several hours, told stories of Africa, and then got dragged to a rock gig my brother was playing. It went really well, we all had Subway (oh man, I’ve missed meatball marinara) before I fell into bed.

I’m missing Kenya already and all of those I was there with. Experience of a lifetime.

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