Traveling somewhere new makes all the sights and sounds novel and exciting, fills my eyes with beauty and my mind with questions as I document the experience in my head along the way. Feeling this about our trip north alerted me to the fact that in many ways Dar now feels like home. I rarely think to write about it, critique it or roll over its intricacies in my mind. In the way that Portland was home so I never thought to reflect on life there on the page, it just was.

I accompanied my colleague Kristen and the dean of the nursing school to Lushoto this week on a scouting expedition for their community health course. The students will live and work for six weeks at a local health dispensary, where basic primary care, family planning and (hopefully) uncomplicated deliveries occur. I’m hoping to return during the field course to visit the students, whom I taught last semester, to review their midwifery skills while they are there.

Being a visitor on an expedition also led me to take more photos than normal. I normally keep my camera tucked in my pocket so as not to join the throngs of people documenting their time in Africa through photos; that mostly feels exploitative to me and widens the space of otherness that already feels so big. However, with my broken Swahili phrase of ‘may I take your picture’ I was able to sneak in a few good photos: posing with Maria, the gracious nurse who took us deep into the mountains of Lushoto; the nurses at the first clinic we visited all smiling warmly in their power pose; the older woman selling apples, carrots and green peppers as we pulled the car to the side of the road and did our shopping curbside.

Lushoto was strikingly stunning. Green rolling hills terraced with corn and cabbage. Afternoon thunderstorms that made me seriously reconsider my plan to come back to hike during the rainy season. The roads that traverse it cut into the side of the mountain and it took great mental strength to occupy my mind with something other than our van careening over the edge. Our hotel heated the hot water with a wood fire and it was so cool it was the first time I haven’t had to take two showers a day in who knows how long. We slept under blankets at night and I wore my wool socks, mostly because I could. I put on my crocheted hat and Blundstone boots and Kristen told me I looked “so Portland”. “Thank you,” I replied. In the morning the air was misty and the dampness brought out the scent of the trees, stirring in me a longing for home.

For now returning home meant a 7 hour drive back to Dar, where the humidity is thick and the threat of the rainy season has mostly meant stickier air, legs slick with sweat after I uncross them from my brief bajaj ride, cursing my light gray t-shirt that announces my sweat level which is high by 9am and has left me with the question of “two showers today or three?”