Nakutamani

You know when you wake up from a dream and you're so convinced it's real that you're confused about waking up in your own bedroom? You try to align where you just were in your mind with the reality of life? And you hope to fall back to sleep so you can continue the dream? Except it's a work day and apparently they get angry when you don't show up? I know, so selfish of our employers, eh?

Wednesday morning, I thought I woke up here:

That far bed? For four months, that was my bed in Tanzania. When I awoke on a cold and foggy Wednesday morning to realise that my dream about being back there had been nothing but a dream, my heart ached a little.

Adding to the realism of my dream was the fact that it was about going back to Tanzania to visit. I saw my friends in their new jobs, I brought gifts of items I knew they loved but were hard to come by in Tanzania, and we caught up on our lives over nyama choma at our favourite restaurant. It was so real.

I spent the remainder of the day missing Tanzania.

I missed bartering for food in the markets.

Lushoto Market
(Not my 'normal' market. I don't have any pictures of Tengeru Market.)

I missed my coworkers.

Grace, Hadija, Rachael, me, Mama Musa (Fatima)
Just a few of my awesome coworkers!

I missed holidays that looked like this:

Morning coffee in Nungwi

Or this:

Elephants in Tarangiri NP

I missed seeing Mt. Meru every morning.

Sunset on Mt. Meru
You can keep Kilimanjaro, this is the mountain I long for.

*sigh*

I will be forever grateful that I got to live in Tanzania and that I live in an age where I am able to keep in contact with many of my friends from there through the magic of the internets and social media, but why can't I live in the era of Star Trek where I could just beam over there for some nyama choma and a Tusker beer while I dust off my rusty Swahili and we catch up on the going on in all our lives?

Do you have a place that you miss? What do you miss the most?

Note: The title means is "I miss you".