last night i dreamt of home

 “Let me go home

I’m just too far from where you are

I wanna come home

And I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life

It’s like I just stepped outside

When everything was going right”

                             (Home, Michael Bublé)

Last night I dreamt of Tanzania. I started off in some old European city where I suddenly came across a nyama choma stall. Nyama choma is Tanzanian barbeque, grilled meat. I exchanged a few words with the owners and they were surprised I could talk Kiswahili.

(The alarm went off at this point, but I turned it off and went back to my dream.)

As I fell asleep again I found myself in a white Land Cruiser Hardtop, the kind we always had when I was little. I was in the back seat and to my left I could see a mountain range. It was covered in snow, and the hills were a dark misty blue. It was Kilimanjaro. I took out my camera and started taking pictures of it. There were clouds drifting over the mountain top at a fast pace, so I had to be quick to take a picture of the snowy top as the sun hit it and made the snow glow a brilliant white.

All of a sudden I was in a different city, on the other side of the country. It was the same neighbourhood where I lived for many years and I knew which junction would take me to my old home. It all looked different though, there were so many new buildings and even a mall that was luxuriously decorated and had international brands. I remember thinking “I gotta come back to shop here!” I was in a hurry though; I wanted to see my old home. I wondered through the maze of new houses, shops and cafes that had appeared out of nowhere. Some were rugged street cafes, some very high class restaurants, everything seemed to be freshly built and not quite finished yet. Eventually the houses ended and I reached fields of maize. The earth was a pale orange-red colour, everything was covered in a fine dust and I enjoyed seeing far across the fields. I didn’t manage to reach home before I woke up, but it didn’t matter. Everything I saw was familiar and new at the same time and I was just so excited to be there.

When I woke up, I lay on the bed going through the dream over and over. I felt I’d been home, even if it was just a dream.