A journey away from the swamps

Many, many years ago, when I was a child living in Mombasa, a small town on the Indian Ocean, I would sit on the low branches on one of the mangrove trees on the beach outside our home. The mangrove grove was a drop down from our house, so when I was there, it were as if I had left and gone to another place and I could imagine that I was far far away. Far from the stuff that hurts a kid when she is growing up.

It was a time of confusion. Many things about life confused me then. But most of all it confused me to have to love so much, that there could be no other people with whom you would rather be, yet they were the same people who taught you things in a most painful way.

Now, I am many many miles away from the pale stench of the bubbles that came out of the roots at the mangrove swamp, a place I spent so much time wondering how it will all be for me in my future. Wondering why it is so hard to grow up, why it is that I cannot get it right and whether growing up is worth the trouble. How I often wondered how much grown am I destined to be.

Each day came and went in a blurr of happenings. A child accepts being tossed around, taken here and there, errands, invitations, school, etcetera and in these passages of days the years of my life unfolded. Some are forgotten some now memories are the discoveries I made along the path that led me away from my mangrove haunt to here: frustrating obstacles, blessed bridges, wonderous magic carpets, bitter bad weather and cleansing broomsticks.

Mangrove have roots that protrude from the ground poking upwards and these sometimes hurt my bare feet not to mention the horrible black, soft, gooey soil that stained me and my clothes and made me stink. Oh, and being bitten by mosquitoes and getting sick with malaria for days on end. These inflictions seem no different in the aftermath of some of the stuff that I came across on the road to aging.

The dark murky soil of the swamp, the obscure adventures, each day different yet so similar, churned in the couldron of my life to form a good picture of the stage set for me to play my part; they are a good reference to measure from.

In the swamp I saw nice flowers wither away in the bright African heat while brown and hard the branches that hurt me - scathing me, stayed on and on, lingering each day, waiting and living, it seemed, to brush against some creature to scrape and let blood. And I saw the cool clean water of the tide come in and wash the grime away and soothe the tears on my body with a slight salty sting.

Now I am here, past my many phases and finally onto a path that leads to knowing, to understanding. I am at the place where I am past the crying and wondering why. I am where I am aware and undaunted. I am past the stage of disillusionment and through with surprise and shock. I am where I wanted to be, only better, finer and smoother than I ever thought I could be.

So whoever in my past saw that toy dingy I let out with the letter pasted on the deck, asking where and how and when it will be for me that I cry no more and ask not why it hurts so much, I need to let you know that it is good now, I know now what I had needed to know then and I don't cry anymore, even the scars are fading and I am where I was going.