Familiar Faces

Here in Lome, Togo, the weather mimics that of a New Orleans summer: morning is June, noon feels like July, and mid-afternoon is the mind-melting, hallucination-inducing, detour-as-far-as-necessary-to-keep-to-the-shade, sweltering heat of August. The familiar climate, combined with the news of great performances at the 2010 JazzFest makes me makes me nostalgic for New Orleans. I love being where I am, but some of the things and places and people I love so dearly seem so far away.

Although we travel to South America with regularity, we have friends there. We have people who we regard as family. Home doesn’t seem quite as distant when there are familiar faces and voices. Our time in Colombia usually has some length; we settle in for a while. We get the scoop on the latest gossip, and we continue conversations started the day before. Long distance travel hasn’t these luxuries. Part of the magical experience is consistently being on the move, seeing and learning and experiencing so much in a short(ish) period of time. But with this mode comes an inability to connect on a deeper level, to delve deeper into the personalities of the people you meet, to grasp a larger, deeper concept of the place you are visiting. Because, after all, you are A Visitor. A lucky one, and hopefully a grateful one, but a Visitor just the same.

It seems to have been around the four-month travel mark that I began seeing people I knew out in the big wild world. Well, people who looked like people I know: a look-alike T.S. in India driving us through Mumbai; a man who was assuredly Kermit Ruffin’s brother (same big smile and dapper hat); a laugh that made me whip around, expecting to see Becky, her head thrown back in giggles. Faces and expressions and shapes and tonalities of voice lurch me from where I am, to the life we have left behind (albeit briefly in the grand scheme of things).

We spent one night in Aneho, Togo, close to the beach. At our hotel was a dog that must have been the sister of my grandmother’s dog, “Got-to.” Maybe a little big sweeter, a bit older, slightly lazier, but still the same darn dog.

Exploring our hotel options in Accra last week, we popped into the “Royal Hotel” for a peek. If my eyes had been closed, I would have sworn on my life that we had walked into my grandmother’s bungalow in Eliot, Maine. My footsteps resounded in the same way on the thinly carpeted floor, the air was heavy with the odor of age and books and mothballs, and the room had a slight salty tang that had seeped into the walls over time.

A dog in the night sounds like Nutter, and I grumble through my dreams for her to hush up.

Someone in our current hotel, Hotel Patience, wears perfume that smells of Tamar. I’m not sure if it is my aunt of childhood, or if she still wears the same scent. But I find myself disappointed when I walk into the lobby and she isn’t there.

Who will be our first, true, familiar face. Will it not be until our visit with Aunt Nancy and Uncle Nat in Brittany? Or perhaps Melissa in Turkey? Where in the world is Peter? Chris, don’t tease, will we see you in Morocco? And that crazy travelin’ Robin, always in a new corner of the globe…come to our corner! Where are your familiar faces? I see you all everywhere, but it turns out not to really be you.

There are reminders of you everywhere. I see you; I hear you; I smell you; I miss you. You are never as far away as our National Geographic world map seems to indicate.

Halfway from home, halfway ‘till we are back again.