Between Places

For months, Zambia has existed almost entirely in the future tense.

It lived in packing lists and spreadsheets, vaccination appointments, fundraising updates, blog posts, shopping lists and countdowns. It was something I was preparing for rather than somewhere I was actually going.

Then, quite suddenly, it wasn't.

Travel has a curious way of compressing time. Months of planning disappear the moment you hand over your suitcase at Heathrow. After that, events begin to gather their own momentum. Boarding passes replace checklists. Departure boards replace calendars. Before long, you're watching England disappear beneath the wing of an aircraft, wondering when exactly the future became the present.

I've always found airports fascinating.

Nobody really belongs there.

Everyone is between places, but more than that, everyone seems to be between versions of their own life. Some people are heading home, others are leaving it behind. Some are setting off on holidays, others on business trips, reunions, adventures or entirely new beginnings. For a few hours, thousands of people whose lives would otherwise never intersect occupy the same peculiar limbo before scattering once again across the world.

Sitting in Heathrow, waiting to board, it struck me that I was doing exactly the same thing. Not just travelling between countries, but between chapters of my own life.

In just a few days' time, it will be twenty years since I was diagnosed with HIV. Two decades is an oddly difficult anniversary to comprehend. It is long enough to feel like another lifetime and yet short enough that I can still picture the clinic room with its faded blinds and the tree outside the window.

Perhaps that is why this journey already feels significant. Not because travelling to Zambia somehow completes a story, but because it reminds me that stories are rarely complete. They simply move into the next chapter.

The flight was fairly uneventful, with the exception of some turbulence as we passed over the Alborán Sea and an unfortunate emergency which was discovered before boarding and impacted the whole flight.

The drinking water system on board had failed, which meant that the crew were unable to serve any hot drinks.

11 hours without tea.

Personally I’d have grounded the entire fleet.

I handled it with my usual calm benevolence however, despite wanting to cry.

Realistically the crew couldn’t do anything anyway, and I decided it was better to be a smiling face for them amidst the sea of people who looked as if they’d been told they’d need to pedal for the duration of the flight to keep the engines running.

It worked, as the wonderful crew took good care of me, kept sneaking me crackers and love hearts, and had some good craic.

Landing in Johannesburg brought an unexpected wave of emotion.

The first time I stood on African soil was ten years ago, at the start of my first volunteering project in South Africa. Returning felt strangely familiar, as though I'd resumed a conversation that had simply paused rather than ended.

I had deliberately booked an overnight stop before travelling on to Zambia. Partly because I thought I'd appreciate a proper night's sleep after an overnight flight, but mostly because I wanted time simply to be here again and allow the enormity of what was about to happen to catch up with me.

The following morning, after breakfast overlooking the airport, I crossed the road, checked my bag and boarded the short flight to Livingstone.

It lasted only an hour and forty-five minutes, but somewhere between Johannesburg and Zambia something quietly shifted. For months I had been travelling towards this moment in my imagination; now I was travelling there for real. When the aircraft touched down, I stepped out into the warm air, collected my bag and met the people who will be my colleagues for the next few weeks. Almost without noticing, the waiting was over. The packing lists had done their job, the countdown had finally reached zero and the Departures chapter had quietly come to an end.

For months, Zambia had been somewhere I was travelling towards in my imagination.

Now it was simply where I was.