being in nothing...

Coming back...

I Dont even know where to start, there's so many beginnings and so many endings, one right after the other, all at the same time, overlapping, and gaps in between where it feels like nothing is happening at all. Like it's all on pause.. as if right now, there's no traffic on Dorval Avanue, theres no running water in Otuam, there's no sea ice on Ungava Bay and there's no way I'm here right now. I dont know where I am.. well, I'm in Montreal at Wini's.. but i'm just staying here, lying here watching sex in the city, having supper with friends, painting my fingernails.. All of this is happening but im not really there to experience it. I'm watching it all happen, i'm there but i'm not. But at 2 in the morning... there really IS no traffic on dorval avanue, 7am, no running water in Otuam --someone's probably walking home from the well right now, big metal bowl of water on their head. I remember my first week in Otuam, I was helping get water, and the would always give me these little buckets, then i was getting impatient with how long it took the tank to fill so i grabbed the HUGE metal bowl and started carrying it to the well, as if i were capable of carrying that on my head full of water. as if.... my host mother and her freinds all yelled at me... no no no nno... you'll die!... but no, I decided i was going to (try). obviously I failed, but i tried.

then when i was in toronto, in my hotel... i went into the bathtub and turned the tap on.. it was hot. I took a hot shower. A Shower, with a shower hose (or whatever that thing that drips water in called).. it rained on me... no flash floods, no hard labour, no cold shock. and then again the next day i took a shower.. so now i take showers. I dont need my dettol or my small purple pail.

but anyway, I've been sick a lot.. I cant eat anything without it coming back up. Has anyone else experienced this after 3 months in a tropical place? but maybe its just needing time for my body to adjust.. I'm supposed to stay in Montreal for the week and go to toronto for the weekend for a couple more CWY debriefings, but i just need to go home. So tomorrow Im going home. When i first went to Ghana I hated it. I was hot, sweaty, smelly, irritable and hungry, all I wanted was a cup of coffee, an air conditioned room (or at least wintertime), and a SHOWER... none of those things materialised in Ghana. But theyre here now. In ghana, my feet were dirty, so dirty they actually looked tan, i was hot and sweating like a motherfucker and it took me forever to get used to having kids follow me around in the streets. Now in Canada, I look at someones kid sideways and they freak out, mama bears all over the place, apparently I'm really menacing looking. Now in Canada, my feet are wet and cold from the slushy sidewalks, my shoes stained with salt, instead of shit. I'm cold, I have been cold since i got off the plane in toronto. What kind of Inuk am i? how do i expect to survive when i go back up north?

Umm.... anyway. I'm ok. I just dont know what i'm doing anymore.