Not thirsty anymore

About a month ago, my dear friend Sierra asked me what it felt like to be ready to leave, to be fully done with this experience. I thought about it more when we got off the phone, and later sprang out of bed and wrote this stream of consciousness. Hopefully the rawness comes across.

*Likhooa is the word for white person in Lesotho
*Sesotho is the language we speak
*Famu is the national music of Lesotho. Accordians and husky voiced singing and often voiceovers of donkeys braying or babies crying. I won't miss it.
*A pitso is a community gathering, the way that all big decisions and announcements are made here.

And I took it.

I took it and I drank it up.

Drank from the long, wide, seemingly never-ending test tube (or is it an old, slightly moldy water bottle?) that seemed to billow out from the bottom like a ball gown of whatever Lesotho had offer. Had to show. Had to give.

I drank it all down.

I drank down early morning rooster crows and furtive calls of “likhooa” across a littered junkyard. Rich liquidy singing and the brightest of stars covering me each night.

I drank passive aggressiveness and calls from people I didn’t remember giving my number to (or maybe that was one of my more generous days hitching?) and the sharp deep-throated sounds of boys and men rushing after their cattle.

I drank in laughter.

I drank in lateness.

I drank my first genuine fear of a dog, the reason I began to run with a rock in my hand from that day forward.

I drank in Sesotho, lots of it. It pours out of me now without my noticing. It may never fully empty from this body.

I drank in love from a woman who had only just met me, who immediately began going on in Sesotho as she led me away from the pitso and towards what would become my home for my first three months here.

I drank in skinny dogs and cows and an eleven year old student told to hold an umbrella for a teacher while she ate her food, happily protected from the scorching sun, unaware or unmindful of the sour yet obedient expression on the girls face. Respect is compliancy.

I drank in bright colored dresses and a menagerie of blankets during all seasons.

I drank joy. I drank sadness. I drank laughter.

I drank hard cultural boundaries that would not and could not be crossed.

I drank the sound of my small neighbors calling “’M’e Mpho! Bye byeee!!!”. I drank it every morning along with my coffee on my walk to school.

I drank in vibrant sunsets and freezing cold winter nights that left me clinging to my hot water bottle like a lover.

I drank in loneliness. I drank homesickness.

I drank white boys discussing “the Africa problem”.

I drank positivity and happiness and vitality, for it was here where I learned that these are active choices one must make, here where I chose to make them.

I drank in candlelight and dirt filled fingernails and blood from a chicken slaughter, fresh on my hands.

I drank in famu.

I drank in beauty and I drank in dust. It seems I can never fully get it out from between my toes, the backs of my ears.

I drank in the same sight of the same three skirts and three button-down shirts every single goddamn morning, sometimes asking myself how I looked on a good day at home. How did I smell? How did I wear my hair? My underwear probably didn’t have holes in it. My feet were probably softer.

I drank in work and idleness, the lines often blurring between the two.

I drank books, endless books. My tongue is sandpapery with the remains.

I drank exasperation and misunderstanding and laughter.

I drank confusion and pain. I drank the sun coming up over the mountains in the morning, lighting the way for my early morning runs, making it easier to effectively dodge the animal shit on the road.

I drank the tears I swallowed when I had to leave my home early.

I drank it all.

I’m still drinking, but I’m not thirsty anymore, and the test tube (or is it a wine bottle?) is damn near finished.

Like a newsreel, it all plays back in my mind. Emotions and “aha’s!” and tears and sweat and shivers and that sensation, shifty as a leopard, that this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

But that’s gone now too.

It’s been days, weeks, hours.Years.

Years.

Khotso.