We stay at the Chobe Safari Lodge tonight, probably the starkest contrast to the last two days I could dream up if I tried. I've been sleeping in a canvas tent on the sandy ground, using toilets that are no more than holes in another canvas enclosure. Here, the french doors in my room open out onto a deck with a view of the river, and the bathtub is so deep I could have easily drowned. (I did not let this fact deter me and took the first bath I've had in nearly eight months.)I feel out of place here, and I think it has more to do with the last two and a half years than the last two and a half days.
I find I've become uncomfortable with luxury. When given the opportunity, like tonight, I will enjoy it; don't get me wrong. It's just that, underneath my joy at being able to have a bath, I've got an undercurrent of hesitation, of awareness. Is it okay that I use this much water when there are so many on this continent who die because they don't have access to it? Is it okay for me to stay at a place where they change the centrepieces on the tables for every meal when I know people who don't know where their next meal is coming from?
It's not the first time I've felt this disconnect, and I pray it won't be the last, but coming out of the bush and into the middle of all this throws the contrast into such sharp relief that if I don't move slowly, I'm afraid I'll cut myself.
But everything is still right in my world. One of the women who works here just passed by with a wide smile. So, she said, you are an African lady now. It took me a heartbeat to realize she was referring to the lappa I have wound around my body, but in that moment my soul agreed, and I remembered where my allegiance lies.
Tomorrow we leave for Zambia, and I will finally be back in the first African country I saw, the one that changed everything for me.
