This is where I sat on the 31st of December 2019 and reflected upon the year I had had. It had been the toughest yet for my career and incredibly challenging financially. It was also the year that found me on a boat at night, watching fireflies dance over the Loboc River as a birthday present thus ticking off the 5th continent in my bucket list of visiting all the continents.
But here I was, on New Years' eve, alone and without him but still the happiest, getting lost in the myriads of lights, watching overs and families fawn over the magnificence before us, deep in my thoughts, as I sipped my hot chocolate with a slice of cheese bread.
I had grand plans for the year ahead.
Chasing a new job opportunity and a new life in a new continent - and not even the one I was in at the moment. It would mean the long-distance part of our relationship continues, but I had always known this was going to be the case whether I stayed in my home country or not. Before dating, we had discussed for at length if we were ready for a new relationship transversing between timezones. It had taken me months to accept this, but I knew once I said yes, there was no going back. And a thousand yeses I said.
In my 20s, I broke off a 2-year relationship because I could not stand the distance. Now in my 30s, having grown tremendously to the woman I am and evaluated what being in a relationship meant and looked like for me, I kinda enjoy the dynamism distance adds to a relationship. It does get hard, don't get me wrong. Extremely hard. But it's like hiking. It gets tiring, it gets frustrating but it's the trails and hills that make it exciting; that keeps you going back for sweet torture.
The beauty, calmness, wonder, and endless possibilities that I was surrounded by is what I thought my new year would be.
With a secret smile planted firmly on my lips, I left the Garden and took the subway to the city.
The plan was to watch fireworks from the tallest building in this country (and the 6th in the world). I had read that they shot off fireworks with an LED laser show for 7 minutes for the previous New Year and was hoping to catch a similar spectacle.
I got there early and found 1000s of people queuing at the entrance of the Skywalk from where one could watch the fireworks. But to go in one needed to have purchased a ticket beforehand and well, they were sold out. Unfrazzled and in the spirit of making lemonade, I contended to watching them from outside the building.
I picked a quiet corner sat down on the steps of the subway station, removed my book and waited. I do this a lot. The temperatures were in the negatives outside. I would have to sit in the warmth inside and get out some minutes to midnight to the perfect vantage spot I had scouted before. I people watched, read a bit then people watched again.
My sweet spot was waiting when I finally ventured outside, 10 minutes to midnight. And soon, I was surrounded by others with the same idea as me. Actually, everyone who had been inside the station had been waiting like I. And wait we did.
5 minutes to midnight.A couple walked by and stood in front of me blocking my view. I exchanged looks with the girl next to me. We communicated with our expressions. Up until now, we had just been aware of each other without conversation.
3 minutes.
Exchanged another disgruntled glance. We were both short and the couple in front of us really tall. But then again, when you are five-foot-nothing, everyone above that is really tall. I didn't come all the way from my home far far away, scout a spot, come early, only to have two inconsiderate people block my view. I also felt like I needed to fight for this girl too. This new friend with a shared enemy. One last exchange.
2 minutes.
I channeled all my African ancestors that fought for our rights and freedoms, tapped the woman and asked them to kindly step aside to allow us a view. They moved. Not aside, but all the way away. Another exchange, this time accompanied by a smile of gratitude from her. I realized that if I had not been there, she would have not done anything. She would have accepted that her view of the fireworks, her plan to come earlier to secure her spot, would have all been wasted.
She was alone like I was and suddenly, I felt like her fairy godmother.
1 minute.
No one has started the countdown. She says thank you and looks up at the huge countdown timer projected on the side of the building. Excitement builds around us, phones held high up ready to capture this moment.
30 seconds.
I am now playing around with my camera phone settings, I want to capture them in slow-motion.
10 seconds.
The colors of the lights on the building change.
5 seconds.
I press record.
4..3.. 2..1. Midnight.
Nothing. Just a little smoke from the side of the building with what sounded like a muffled bang.
We cannot see the fireworks. But it looks like they just went off. We wait.
1 minute past midnight.
We exchange our disappointment, her in broken English. We then talk about the last trains and walk back into the station. To get home, I need to change trains twice, and somehow, something that has never happened to me in all my years of travel, I get into the wrong train. I realize as it peels out of the station and jump out at the next. But that was the last train on that line. I see there is a bus scheduled to arrive in 54 minutes. It will be late, but I will wait. I decide to ask a kindly looking man closing his shop what time the bus comes around. He says no more buses are coming. I'll walk back, I decide. It's just one station over with well-lit streets. I am also trying to walk 1000kms by the end of the year anyway, might as well start accumulating them, minutes to the new year. There are still people milling about as I reach the station I had just left.
People are saying there is one more train, on the line I need. I lean on a column, take out my book, and wait. A girl comes to stand next to me. She looks like she knows there is a train coming and reassure myself.
Minutes later, I am doubtful and tell myself it doesn't hurt to ask her. But I am not in the mood for a chitchat and do not want to start a conversation at 2AM that includes Google translate. But then again, I do not want to be standing here for hours only to find out that there are no trains. So I ask her in English. She also doesn't know, she is chancing it. She speaks English. We wait a bit. We ask each other if we should ask the other people at the station and laugh. Neither of us wants to go through the hustle that language barrier creates.
We wait even more. A group of loud boys who look local arrives at the station. She asks me if I know Korean. I tell her I can read the alphabet only. She says she doesn't either and then walks to the boys and asks in broken Korean (I don't even know if it's broken because if you do not know a language, how can you tell?) They confirm there is a train coming. We realize we are both changing to Line 6 but heading to different directions. So we agree that we stick together, get off at the same station, and wait with each other for our respective trains.
Train arrives.
We talk and talk all through the 30something minute ride as if we have spent the day together. We get off and the first person we meet is a metro employee who answers before we even ask. No trains on our line. We decide to find a cinema and watch movies till morning. Luckily, we are near a couple of them. We are in Dongdaemun. That's supposed to be the heartbeat of this area. They are all closed. Hasn't anyone ever thought that some people would like to watch late-night movies in a cinema on New years eve? We both agree that we wouldn't mind such a plan. I am hungry. I haven't eaten since morning except for the hot chocolate and bread slice hours ago. Chicken and beer places are open all night, she says. I don't drink, she doesn't want to drink. We hope the first place we find will accept to sell us chicken without the beer. Normally they insist on selling both as a package.
We are in luck.
Two girls who met a couple of hours ago in the middle of the night, both new to the country they are in right now, both alone on New Year's eve talk about everything and nothing. She is in the country for a study abroad program from a neighboring country. Her new friends here wanted to keep drinking, she wanted to go back to her hostel. And that is how she ended up at the station so late and alone. I tell her of my travels in this country we find ourselves in, of my home that she has only ever seen on wildlife TV. She tells me of the experience of being born a girl in a country that wanted boys and her parents' disappointment. I had always read and watched such stories, never sat opposite a person who lives it. I feel privileged for her to choose to share such deep and personal feelings. But she is not seeking sympathy, she is strong, independent, wild, carefree and I love her already.
Since trains start operating at 5.30AM, we will sit in this bar until then. Taxis would be mad expensive for both of us, we reckon, and we can't be bothered to find buses - none of which will be a direct trip for us both. We'd rather not wait at bus stops in this freezing weather. So we talk some more. Just when none of us can stay awake any longer, it is time for the trains. We walk to the station, the trains arrive at the same time. We hug goodbye and promise to keep in touch.
Sitting in the empty train, I think about how crazy the night turned out. How serendipitous the circumstances that led to our meeting, how none of us planned to spend the new year this way. We had laughed at how it could be destiny that our plans did not work out as expected so that we could meet. I couldn't have asked for a better New Year's eve/day and she felt the same way too. We had talked about how this meeting could be the manifestation of how our new year would be. Full of surprises, but beautiful ones like the day we both had just had, albeit separately. We both felt it.
We know we will not meet again. She has exams in the coming week and the weekend she is free is the one my man is coming back home. I don't want to make any plans for that weekend. I have not seen him for over a month. The reason why is another story. She goes back to her home country the week after.
We don't talk again. I leave the country a week after Covid19 hits South Korea. Her country is the source. I never think to text her. But as I write this, exactly 7 months after our meeting, I wonder how she is.
None of my beautiful plans and dreams that I had meticulously planned in the 4 hours I spent walking around The Morning of Golden Calm has panned out. I could not leave Kenya once I got back from Seoul. Borders were closed. I had to stay put and restrategize in the throes of a word pandemic full of uncertainties. Should I rent a house now that I was back home and wait? I had moved out and put my stuff in storage, knowing that after S. Korea, I would head to Europe and settle. But if I was to rent instead of staying at a friend's, how long would it be for? What if just when I settle in my new house, the world returns to normal and I have to pack and leave again? Should I just look for work here and shelve those relocating plans? I was leaving Kenya because I wanted a change in my career. But what if I settled here now that I was stuck, got a new job, would that mean that I don't still pursue my relocation plans? It was maddening trying to work this out.
So I hiked all the hills I could find near my friend's house. I took long drives to places where roads end. I would park the car and keep walking through the bushes until I could walk no more and took beautiful pictures. And when I was done with those hills, I left town and explored even farther away hills. National parks, camping sites, I went to them all. It's how I kept sane, you see. Nairobi was on lockdown and curfewed. I get cabin fever on normal days; a lockdown would drive me insane. While out there, I thought of nothing but the moment.
I will text her today. And hopefully, she has made it out unscathed.
I want to find out how she has been. How her family has been coping. But more importantly, I want to find out if she ever thought, as we sat in the dimly lit bar eating mountains of chicken and comparing notes on our favorite K-dramas, that this is the current situation was what the universe had for us. For the whole world. I want to reminisce with her how happy we had been that chilly dawn of the new year, how we looked forward to living the best year yet.
The Garden of Morning Calm might have not been the way to describe what my year has been so far, what the year has been for the rest of the world. But the events of that night certainly did somehow prepare me for what was to come and taught me a few things.
To ride the uncertainty wave, not to fight it, to go with the flow, to find moments of joy in chaos, to be my brother's keeper.
