Crushing right through to the back of my skull, scraping along my nerves and straining my mind these images are. A TV box swung and flung at a high velocity towards me, raising small clouds of dust and making sparks as it bounces and flips along, landing hard with a smash, bursting into particles all over the mound of items hipping up at the back of my mind, only to be followed close behind by a more brittle and much larger faster delivery echoing with a blunt disinterring burst... In another brief moment there will be another and I cannot take any more of it. This overwhelming discomfort is disorienting; I’m feeling nauseous and I close my eyes, my head is pounding. An endless fan, humming very loud, feels my ears and muffles out some drumbeats playing in the background. Deep breaths through my nose, long and forced, in… and out, again… and again. Rest… and inhale, feel your pulse coming back to you, just take it all in and be pleased to have overcome a most unpleasant feeling indeed.
What was that all about, the vulgar and ragged dust raising unrest? Is that what I should expect when the plane lands, when I meet my people for the first time? Is this dystopian world what awaits me in this place I long to call home? Is this plane going to crush and burn upon landing, bursting into flames and roasting every one of us into charred remains of hopeful imbeciles that thought these pilots new what they were doing when they took charge of this aircraft? All this turbulence, is it not just a precursor to an out of control spiralling into a mountainside? Why the reassurances, “everything is fine, we will be landing in a couple of minutes.”? Can they really land this thing? Why is the plane loosing altitude, the ground getting closer so fast, racing past beneath me, the vibrations and screeching, the loud engine noises, the sudden deceleration, is everything fine? We are now headed directly for the terminal building, did we really make it? Well I suppose, from all the applause, it would seem that I am not the only sceptic in here.
"This way please."? Is that the room where they do the strip-searching and the brutal interrogations? My entire luggage is here, how did they manage that? The airport attendants are processing my passport and travel documents, am I the exception?
The capital city is brown and dusty, almost no paving in sight. Parking has been created out of every piece of space that isn’t being used by the moving traffic. It’s a miracle that we made it in this motor-vehicle, I think the driver taught himself how to drive, God really exists.