Homesickness is a low hum

After leaving home with my brand-new identity card, reserved in Kenya for 18-year-olds, I started feeling what would be the first strains of homesickness. It was far too thrilling to be all alone travelling the world for the first time to be worrying. I had chosen a college, sent a single application, received a single yes and gotten on a plane headed to the first of many years abroad. The first pick up at the airport by a family friend I had not seen for years started me off — her warmth, hugs and chicken stew melting those first few feelings of clear terror at leaving the only home I had known.

I had left before. Four years in boarding school where I was barely 13 years old, terminating with a dream to study abroad. Now I was in university, or college, as they called it. It was Convocation, and soon, a trip to the school’s nutritionist. I could not stand the food that was carefully prepared to suit the international palate. I was picking at my plate. She was a sunny woman who wore fruit and vegetable shaped earrings and fabulously bright colors. Mrs. M took a history of the foods that I was used to for breakfast, tropical fruit, shallow fried sweet potatoes and arrow roots, hearty bone soup, and Kenyan tea then she put her notebook aside and said — “Honey, we do not have any of those things here — you and I can find some things that work for you. Don’t worry!”