February 26, 2007

I’ve sprung my surprise so it’s time to come clean about why my postings have fallen off the last month or so.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m back in New York, and I’m going to be here for a while. After nearly 19 months, my African adventure is over. I didn’t write much about this before because I wanted to surprise people when I arrived. Why? Because I’m a deeply disturbed individual.

After one scream that almost blew out my Dad’s eardrum and two people saying, “What month is this?” all I can say is, mission accomplished.

After getting through the initial decision to come home, making the decision about when to leave was surprisingly easy. I was just sitting around one day, after discovering that no editors cared about prisoners taking over Cameroon’s jails or the Chinese president’s visit, and knew that something needed to change. Bec recognized it too. We sat down that evening and both said, essentially at the same time, “I need to go home.” (Actually, she said, “It’s time for you to go home.”) That was mid-January or so. I was on a plane Feb. 15. It feels good to be back, getting started on my career again.

We figured it would be fun to cross into my 30s in Cameroon, because Bec was able to organize an absolutely perfect birthday party that included sitting on an open verandah watching the sun go down with dear friends I was saying goodbye to. We then made a trek to Chez Harris, a nightclub we like. We listened to music (that was unfortunately interrupted by MTN, the South African telephone conglomerate, office party), ate our favorite Cameroonian dish, chicken DG (DG stands for director general. Essentially, it’s a mercantile General Tso’s chicken) and just get one last blast of Cameroon. It helped that the birthday actually fell on a Saturday. I can’t thank Rebecca enough for throwing such a wonderful 30th birthday party, and under such melancholy circumstances.

We also wanted to spend Valentine’s Day together, and that worked out perfect, although it was slightly downbeat as well since I was heading out the next day.

I won’t regale you with tales of my flying, only to say it was a little more adventurous than I would have liked. Air France changed the baggage weight limits and we didn’t know, so I had to repack at the airport. And they were rude about it, I guess to prepare me for France. I watched “The Queen” from Yaounde/Douala to Paris, but was stuck with bad movies on a Delta flight from Paris to New York. Why don’t American airlines have the personal video screen, the greatest advancement in aviation since birds developed feathers?

I fell victim to a projectile vomiting event, although it was more that I was in the outer reaches of the blast radius, with a little landing on my right hand. I felt bad for the kid. He couldn’t have been more than 10. He was Italian, so he had the language thing going for him. Plus, other than having trouble with takeoff and landing, he was perfectly behaved. He sat around talking to his Mom and Dad, in Italian and I noticed an extra set of eyes on my laptop when I was watching Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup finals, when the Rangers won the Cup. Since it doesn’t look like they’ll win one for a while, thanks for the memories, boys.

On behalf of my jumpy-stomached friend, I ask this question. If a landing is bad enough that at least one passenger loses his breakfast, lunch and snack, does the pilot deserve applause? I’m against applauding a landing in general. But I definitely think that if someone boots, the pilot should be met with indifference. I’ll reserve booing for more serious flight difficulties I’d rather not write about.

I’m getting used to the cold, sort of. There’s snow on the ground outside. I can see it on my parents’ deck. It was 28 degrees Celsius when my flight landed in Douala (that’s roughly 90 Fahrenheit, and extremely humid). It was 28 degrees Fahrenheit when I landed in New York, with wind. That was a bit of a shock.

I feel like I should give some sort of wrap up on Africa. But honestly, my feelings haven’t changed that much from when I marked the one-year point. Maybe this is the best way to describe my African adventure: It was like living any place else. There were good times and bad times, things I loved and things that made me crazy. There were exciting moments and boring moments. But during my time in Rwanda and Cameroon, with brief stops in Uganda and Burundi, all those experiences were more intense. The happy moments were happier, the bad moments worse. Is that good or bad? I don’t know. It’s going to take some time to figure that out.

What I do know is that I’m extremely glad that I had this experience, and I think it was good for me. I thank Rebecca for letting me join her (and I can’t wait for her to rejoin me). And I don’t think I would change anything that happened.

Thanks for reading this and sharing in my experiences while I was away. I really appreciate it. It’s good to be home.