ulala

6:00AM and the alarm is going off. I silence it without opening my eyes. I hear noises from within the house and it takes me a moment to remember I no longer live alone. The roommate must be an early riser. I stand in my dimly lit room and point myself in the direction of my wardrobe. I choose a charcoal grey cotton skirt, one I have not worn in a long time. I pull on a heather grey tank embellished with bright orange stitching and tiny silver beads. It has been windy lately so I grab a white linen wrap and add the necessity, to cover my knees should they spill out from underneath my skirt, bright orange capri length tights. I make coffee in the press. I am not hungry, nor do I have enough time. I don’t bother with my hair and leave it in the messy bun I slept in. I smooth it down in front of the mirror. I find the keys to the dumpy blue truck that carries dead people. It doesn’t start the first time but comes to life on the second try. I roll into the front gate near the school at 7:32 and find Susy kindly, patiently waiting to help me. We prepare bread rolls with peanut butter and jam for our Alpha students and they slowly start to arrive. Music from a guitar starts to fill our little school and I watch all my precious little students raise their hands and close their eyes and worship. I join in. I close my eyes to give thanks to God and to quiet my mind. I am not fully there. On this day a big part of my self is thousands of miles away with a friend who just lost her grandfather and is feeling the pain of loss. I want to be there to hug her and to make her laugh over a massive slice of cake from the bakery on 211 Main. I just want a day with her, to give her my companionship and I want hers. I open my eyes to see these students who were once strangers, now slowly starting to feel like my very own. 

I turned 35 this week.  I played tennis this week. It felt incredibly surreal to be wearing normal clothes, hitting bright yellow balls on courts where barefooted children walk by carrying live chickens. I haven’t played tennis since Bob Brown and I played one Saturday morning in September at the Hart County Recreation Department. I practically grew up there. Dad finally took me on the day I got “good enough” and I got to play the real game and not beat a ball up against the large brick wall at Hartwell Elementary. I am sore. I feel 35.

I walk back home and immediately crawl into bed. I set my alarm to allow for a twenty minute nap and awake from a deep dream filled sleep. I feel like what I can only assume a mother with a new born baby feels like and wonder if I will ever catch up on my rest.  I grab my red leather Brics suitcase and fill it with linen pants, a bathing suit, my kindle, a book entitled Portuguese in 3 Months, a travel size towel, a compact with blush and bronzer, lip gloss, toothbrush, chino shorts, a cotton tunic and a scarf. I walk across the street and buy cell phone credit from a boy in a bright yellow vest. I then walk to the front of the Nautilus Hotel and find a short lady with olive skin and black hair, clear hazel eyes, dressed in black pants and shirt, local market flip flops. She has a tiny stud in her nose and a thick French accent. She introduces herself. Emma and I drive across the street to my house and I grab my suitcase and we drive out to Muerreube. She and her husband own a little resort and I am treating myself to a night there. I need rest. I need deep sleep. I need French cuisine. I need the sea breeze. I need a place without the constant noise of the barracas. I need a place to think and quiet my mind. 24 hours won’t be enough but I will take whatever I can get. 

We stop at the turn off the main road for tomatoes at the market. Emma coughs and blames it on flu but I suspect cigarettes play a role too. Her accent is so thick it sounds fake. We are speaking the same language but we both strain to understand one another. I watch how the people in the market respond to her. She is a familiar face but she is also greeted with the same exuberance of a foreigner that I get. She is tanned and plainly dressed, local flip flops and all. I look at myself in the visor mirror. Blue eyes, freckles, subtle tan lines but white as can be. Even in my most absolute casual, I am in diamond studs, J. Crew vintage timex and leather bracelet, Gogo ring that never leaves my finger. Today I am in all white linen and braided sandals, pink toes. For a moment I want to be more like her, a little more Bohemian, a little more European, a little darker, a nose ring. I want to be cool and chic and have a lodge on the Indian Ocean and drink red wine for breakfast. But nose rings don’t go with Tory Burch tunics, so I change my mind and smile back at the pale 35 year old Akuna in the mirror. 

We drive along sandy roads in the little CRV, following wooden signs pointing us to Ulala. Ulala means “sleepy” in the local Makua dialect. It is exactly what I am and I cannot get to my room fast enough. I glance at the lovely macufi roofed bar and pavilion, commenting to Emma how lovely it is, with annunciated syllables. I stumble out to greet the sea, but promptly grab my room key. The moment hot water was mentioned I knew what I wanted to do first. I step into the large granite shower and turn on only hot water and watch my flip flop tan run down the drain.  My skin glows. I have forgotten a hair brush. I roll my wet hair into a towel turban and fall into bed. I sleep for three hours. I force myself awake and find myself under soft linens, in a King sized bed, underneath a large white canopy net. The bed is handmade from local wood as is the entire bungalow.  The decor is nicely done and the architecture is cozy. And despite my 3 hour nap, after a dinner of yellow fin tuna, beet and apple salad, acorn squash with mushroom and red peppers, I sleep like a baby. I can hear the ocean, the breeze blows right through my little bungalow, a bright full moon as my night light...

6:00AM and I open my eyes to see the ocean at my feet. I stretch dramatically and sit upright in the center of my big bed. The hot water is not a hot as it was before and I decide against it. I put on linen pants and a tunic with quarter length sleeves and smooth my hair around the messy bun. I grab my kindle and head toward the pavilion for breakfast. I walk straight through the pavilion in deep sand, looking as if I have just learned to walk but trying to appear graceful in flip flops in deep sand. I break a tiny sweat. A solo wooden folding chair in army green canvas is empty on a small dune of sand. The tide is low and it looks like a different planet. White sand still far in the distance. White capped waves far away. Small pools of clear turquoise water. Beautiful women and fragile little girls in colorful caplanas, baskets and tin pots on their heads collecting mussels. I watch them. I take it all in. The expanse. The colors. The reality. 

Breakfast is a bit of a disappointment but I eat as if I am new to this too. I am given four small pieces of toast so I choose from a large selection of jams and jellies and spreads and I make all four pieces different. I make one with blackberry jam and butter, both of which I never eat eat here and I used to deny myself where I used to live. I make the second with prune/plum jam and decide right away that I don’t like it. I make the third with honey and the fourth with peanut butter, solely because the meal needs a protein. The long table displaying the jams and jellies also has a large glass jar of Muslix. $17 a kilo, lightly sweetened goodness. The chef dressed in black shorts, a black chefs jacket and black dress shoes without socks brings me an unopened large carton of plain yogurt and two boxes of Ceres juices, one with mango. I set it aside. I really want milk for my Muslix but go with the yogurt instead and add a banana. He brings me coffee in a large French press with milk. I eat every bite and shift my kindle from right to left as I eat and drink, and eat and drink again. I am well into my Emily Giffin novel that I sadly don’t recommend. I think I only like her because she lives in Atlanta and that last novel was all about the ATL. But this one was just dumb with little good parts in between. We were friends on Facebook. It was fun to watch her go from little known New York Times Bestseller to casting for a Hollywood Movie. But I found her to be crass and I unfriended her. Despite the 3 cups of coffee I feel a nap coming on but I shake it off, determined to comb the beach. 

I waddle through deep sand back to my bungalow and put on my bathing suit and bright orange chino shorts. It feels good to dress normal. I wear yesterday’s tank top. At last glance, I decide I feel half naked with my knees showing and I grab the scarf Kim Brown gave me and I tie it around my waist. That’s better. 

I have been to this beach before. I came in 2007 with Tamara Maruska Steiner and we were both in awe of how stunning it was. It is. There was a heard of cattle on the beach with us that day. Today I understand they are prohibited. This place makes Cumberland Island seem like a dump. Blasphemy, I know. But this is pristine, turquoise blue water, white sand beach. There are even horses on the beach today. They are our Iris horses. Someone brought them here a long time ago to teach the children and I reckon they are the only horses in this whole Province and I guess the boys from the Center are out riding, but in this moment as they come racing through tide pools and I can hear their heavy breathing, I just stand there with my mouth open and wondered who orchestrated this moment just for me. I look for sea glass but only find one piece, the pirates cutting back on their Heineken's. I go back to the room and the hot shower. My skin is glowing again. White from the shower and pink from the sun. I put the chinos back on and the tunic. I’m hungry.

The chef in the dress shoes brings a whole entire quiche to my table at lunch. It is cut into four large halves. The crust is homemade. It is so incredibly good. It is served with a large bowl of salad that was okay but really just got in the way of the most amazing quiche I have ever had. I want a second slice but I don’t want the chef in the dress shoes to judge me, so I cut it in half. The salad comes with a homemade balsamic dressing that I pour over the whole plate. I pause only to take a picture. 

My 4:30 departure comes way too quickly. Emma helps me gather my things and her husband, George, waves goodbye. We skid along the sand in the little CRV and I quickly realize what a difference 24 hours, 2 hot showers, 1 big nap, 9 hours  of sleep, a walk along the sea, 3/8ths of a vegetable filled quiche, 3 outfit changes and a novel about a girl finding her birth mother can do for a 35 year old girl.