HOME BOUND… For good!
For the last 5 years, I have been plotting and planning my return back to Senegal… and for good… and not look back! I lived in NYC for close to two decades and it felt right and it felt good! I got lost in the melting-pot and didn’t want to have it any other ways, but alas there was something missing. There always had been something missing. I LIVED! I LIVED a life but I yearned for more: I missed my people. I missed my people despite the level of luxury, comfort, freedom and the ups and downs (mostly downs towards the end of my stay).
It was not an easy decision, but it was one that had to be made. Working on a plan B meant planning for me to come back if this journey didn’t pan out to my liking… I didn’t up and leave, but I set forth a date that would be my departure and come hell or high water, I was to leave!
The greatest news that I had been waiting for came forth on November 14th, 2017. The kind of news that you wait a long while for coz it will open up all doors that were once closed! Did this mean that I had to cancel my flight leaving the next day? Did this mean that at long last there was hope in the horizon that my venture would benefit from this wonderful news? Did this mean that… The questions kept invading my thoughts: all the could bes in the world! Yet I stood firm to my former decision/promise that I would leave no matter what!
Royal Air Maroc bound for Casablanca leaving out of JFK becomes my hooptie ride, and I am heading to Marrakech to clear head for a bit! 5 days in Marrakech turned out to feel all 1001 nights. All good things must come to and end, and I am about to face destiny head-on. No turning back.
As the cabin of the plane opens up, the salty air engulfs my lungs and it feels natural, while so many memories come flooding in head! I was born not far from the airport. We had relatives who lived near the airport. I occasionally escaped to the beach against the better judgment of my parents. All of this in a split second.
Customs, immigration and whatnot processes are not as seamless, but I make it through! I am a citizen of this country after all, yet I am not made feel welcome that I am. In what seems like an eternity, I wait in the parking lot for family to pick me up. That annoying little voice in one’s head that nags, that doubts, that stirs fear in you, wakes up and tries to take over my thoughts. It’s much stronger than me this time. Fighting it in a mountain of a task, so I dwell on it, and question my entire existence if I just made the biggest mistake of my lifetime and about to live a life full of regrets!
There’s no turning back, I try to console myself. I can make do with what I am to find in this land, or I can live the remaining of my days complaining, pondering on what coulda, woulda, shoulda!
Getting home… the wifi works, the water flows although the small pressure, the electricity is on, the mattress is memory foam, so forth and so on, but I am just so pleased that there’s wifi! Alas it feels not like home! I miss my uptown NYC apartment! It was mine and I built it as I saw fit to my lifesstyle.
A shower, and late dinner/early breakfast (however you call it), a prayer later I hit the sack trying to console myself by watching an episode of Empire before crashing…. I didn’t foresee this, but at 0.89Mbps the wifi is not strong enough for me to stream anything. NOTHING, I tell you. How can this be? Why is it like this? I don’t think I can survive this travesty of an internet. You set your mind/heart/body/soul to something yet the universe laughs at you “Not today!”
I am off to sleep… If this is any indication of what’s to come, I am about to experience a series of disappointments, a series of treachery, a series of lies, deceits… It was my choice to come back home and I am here to stay.
