african bliss for bohemian mermaids here you will find: my mind, lost in time linguistic trance-lations of dance, epic mom-ents mosquito net placements and i bet some cosmic revelations inspired by zulu nations

worlds confused: i am waiting out here for the fung wah bus:triple culture shock-from new york’s underground to chinatown to east coast traffic-all with african soil still stuck to my feet. i am feeling the unnerving quiet of america. there are no colorfully clad women with babies tied to their backs carrying giant baskets of fried plantain on their heads and selling them through the open windows of a still moving bus. there are no black people pressed up against me and squishing me against the hot metal walls of a tro tro. there are no people on the front of the bus preaching the good word: of jesus christ our lord and saviour hallelujah! no one is praying out loud and singing gospel music while we sit in traffic. there’s no hip-life or reggae blasting through improperly wired speakers. there are not crowds of people walking the streets, throwing unfamiliar hand jestures at each other and shouting in an untranslatable language. there are no people sitting outside occupying the shade beneath every tree and just, sitting. i am noticing the empty: the people hiding in their big four wheeled machines and four door houses and not even aware of how fortunate they are. so i close my eyes, feeling too blessed to comprehend. now i am taking small bites of this salad that my mother made me. the first raw thing, the first green vegetable, the first vitamin rich bit of nourishment i have tasted in six months. and i am thinking about the millions of people who eat mashed cassava three times a day and have never known a vegetable other than onions. i am thinking about the naked children with their bulging malnourished bellies and their skinny legs and how people sleep when they are hungry so that the hunger goes unnoticed and i always saw people sleeping in the middle of the day. i am looking at the diversity and lushness of the abundance in the refridgerator, the basket of million colored fruits on the counter and the drawer full of whole grain sprouted bread and i have tears in my eyes, because my memory is looking at the bland yellow mush i have been eating with my hands and i am thinking about how starvation seems so normal in the context of where i just was. it is okay to eat nothing but yams and bananas for breakfast lunch and dinner all week long. there were no calcium rich broccoli trees, no sprouted garbanzo bean pates and no root chakra nourishing beets. no one is talking about anorexia or health food or being vegan or living an energetically abundant raw food lifestyle. they are just hungry and don’t even know it. they are missing minerals unaware and lacking optimal nourishment without the consciousness that there could be anything more than what they have. so i put my fork down, my stomach full of gratitude and guilt, my mind full of awareness of this abundance and inbalance. now i am taking this hot shower, the first in six months. feeling the freely running water beat down and dissolve the desert off my skin. i am thinking about the volta river drying up and the power going out in ghana every twelve hours because the rainy season forgot to arrive and there is so much water missing from africa. i am thinking about the children who pour buckets of cold water over their heads and lather up with lemony soap while strattling the open sewer and how you can watch the dirt run off their bodies and mix back in with the earth. and i am thinking about the subsaharan women who spend all morning carrying gallons of water on their heads from the village wells and how straight their spines are. and so i turn off the faucet and drip dry with these composite feelings of gratitude and guilt. i am brushing my teeth with this clear water, thinking about the people in mali who chew on licorice sticks and don’t know how to use a toothbrush and most of their teeth are missing but their smiles are still pure and shining. i am thinking about how this water will not give me guinea worm or giardia or anyother unwanted parasite and how incredibly lucky i am to have money to buy toothpaste and what a precious item that is. and when i am home and clean and fed and i step outside at dawn, the smell of spring:strikes me with a catapult of sweet-the most delicious scent of green earth and damp soil and precious pollen and life, earth breathing her renewal and exhaling perfection. i cry at these smells, at the way they touch my nose and trigger my memory and intoxicate my sentient being. i cry at the feeling of cool crisp morning air, of dew on my bare feet and the sound of new england birds. this beauty is so full, so rich: and i am too fortunate - so incredibly blessed, to be back in this bliss, with africa infusing all my perspective.