Going

I woke up on the plane as the horizon turned red over the North Atlantic. I was sleeping against the window, and the beginning of the sunrise was right there when I opened my eyes. It looked so familiar that I had to make a mental list of how many times I have flown this route in the last twelve years, since I first went back to Africa in 2000.

My first trip back across the Atlantic was to Kenya in January of 2000. I had so little sense of what Kenya might be like that I was convinced that my plane was going to crash on the way there.

I am still not sure why I got on the plane.

But by the time I got to the airport, I had forgotten that I thought I was going to die, which was good, because our plane was delayed into Detroit because of high winds. Do you know what high winds will do? Knock a plane off the runway. Kill you, basically.

After a great deal of chaos in Detroit, all twenty of us, or however many of us there were, ended up in the middle seats of a DC-10. DC-10s have two seats, an aisle, five seats, an aisle, and two seats again. It's a recipe for deep vein thrombosis in the middle seat. I was actually only one seat into the middle five, and the woman in the very middle was a woman from the Caribbean going to London for her brother's funeral.

I hate not sitting by the window, because how will I will the plane to stay in the air if there are problems if I can't see what is happening?

And yet, somehow, it all worked out fine. I went to Kenya. I went home. And then I just kept going, until I moved to Gone West.

I've got to get back to it.