The London Button

Back to It

Two months since the end of my African Adventure – it’s about time I wrote something.

From the moment I touched down in London, things were go. I dumped the bags, grabbed a shower and a sit down at the Lad’s and then hit the streets. Straight out to a good friend’s birthday drinks. Yes, back for mere hours, and I found myself in the pubs of the east end with a Leffe in hand. No flies on me…

The very next day, I began working on some freelance writing work that I’d set up whilst in Uganda. And a few days after that, it was back to full time work at the BBC.

In some ways being back was initially a shock to the system: the food, the cold, the amount of booze we drink, white children! But in many other ways it’s as if the first three months of the year may not have happened, that I may have imagined it all. Being back in London, safaris, jigga worms that burrow and grow in the soles of the feet, the red dust, and the wonderful children I worked with, all feel, now, so very far away. London doesn’t allow much time for reflection. It only has a go button, no slow down and certainly no stop. if you don’t keep on going, you might fall off.

On the Tube, a nonchalant voice comes over the speaker to announce that there are delays to the northern line because there’s a person under a train at Finchley Central. The people on the platform tut and sigh, and shake their heads at the news. Not in regret, but in annoyance that their journey is going to take 15 mins longer than usual. And I think about how unhappy that person must’ve been to do such a thing, and about the people they may have left behind. But London has no time to stop and think. It only has a go button.

I hear a piece of news from Malaika Babies House here and there, about a child I hugged, help feed, held as we waited to see a doctor. These affirm that my experiences out there were indeed very real, but a world away from my current one. I’m not sure in which I should be…

It’s my good friend’s birthday. It’s a long weekend in London. Another day of drinking, of chat and of catching up, and excess.