It’s been almost 8 months since I moved out here and I have to be honest with you, it’s not getting easier. I think things would have been better if I got to go home over the summer, but, thanks to the lovely pandemic we’re in, that wasn’t possible. It’s the little things that get me, like when am I going to see my mum’s face again? Not like through a phone screen, but actually see her. We used to sit in the living room and gossip our lives away about anything and everything; sometimes we’d go out for happy hour and laugh for hours on end. Never really thought much about it until I got out here. I used to call her to tell her about every minor detail that would happen in my life. It didn’t matter how minute it was, I would ring her up. Now I’ve got a 7hr time zone difference to battle and boy is it a hard fight.
Sometimes I just miss the food. If I could find someone to make me traditional Kenyan food I would marry them on the spot. It’s not just the native dishes that I miss. All the products and ingredients I grew up on are not in any of the stores I have explored and I have searched. There was this rice milk I would have with my coffee and it was divine. I’ve tried so many milk alternatives and that was hands down the best one but I haven’t even seen rice milk on the shelves let alone that one. Don’t even get me started on the coffee though. Growing up in a country that distributes the coffee beans they use at your local Starbucks, I can confidently say the coffee here just doesn’t match up. I’m extremely lucky that my mum made sure I packed a thousand and one tea bags from home before I left because I would have been suffering.
Don’t get me wrong, everything is not entirely bad. I think moving out was the right decision for me. It’s helped me gain some form of independence I feel like I never could have otherwise. It’s also got me more in tune with Kenya than ever before. Every time I mention where I’m from, everybody has a library of questions they want to ask and, I don’t want to feed anyone the wrong information, so I’m reading. I’m ashamed to admit it but it’s not something I really did before. I know more now about my home than I ever did before and I’m really happy about that. Most of all I’ve met so many beautiful souls.
So, I guess there’s a lot of pros and cons to living 8,028 miles away from home. I’m not sure I would give up the pros, so I guess I’m just going to have to push through. When I get down in the dumps I’ve got a 6-hour playlist of purely African music and a cup of tea waiting for me. I know I’ll be fine, it’s just some days it really hits you.