Kuwait Day 1: Home

I can't believe I'm here.
It feels like home to me.
In one way, I feel as if I've come home...It feels comfortable, familiar, right.
Yet, the country has changed in many ways, and it has been a decade since I've been in this part of the world. It is still a foriegn land, I'm still an outsider.

But not in the camp. The Saudi-Arabian texaco (now Chevron) camp is an hour away from Kuwait city, right on the Saudi border. Its small..and kind of like a military base. Guards and fences, some houses for families, a community center, a hospital, a small grocery store, a few parks and office buildings. Just big enough to drive the golf-cart around. Camp is home. Camp is my turf. Its where I spent my afternoons playing on the beach, my nights wandering through the park and racing in the streets. I knew every tree and bush, every shortcut and every line of fence. I was sad to see the old pavillion torn down, and the neglected state of some older buildings.

But I'm so happy to be here, finding things that I've missed, things I never knew I could see or experience again.

I feel validated, knowing that all of those snippets of memory and cloudy stories of my life really happened. I did not dream them, I did not make them up. Here, there is physical evidence of my childhood, my past...

Its full of sand and sea...eucalyptus trees in the park and dusty tennis courts, marble stairs and concrete walls...heat that wraps you up like a blanket and wind that whips your hair.

Memories are coming back to me in floods.

Mom is surprised at how much I know, down to where the keyhole is on the golfcart and the material of the fence that leads to the beach.

It is an incredible experience to come back to my childhood home. My parents live in a villa identical to the one I lived in as a child, just a few houses down. It smells the same. My mom says its the old air conditioning units, dad thinks its the bugspray. Smells are like magic for the memory. Tastes are too.
Frozen pineapple juiceboxes, warm orange soda from a glass bottle, coca cola in tall thin cans cold from the fridge. Warm cheesebread from the village, cooked in a brick oven, grilled chicken with yogurt sauce and mars bars icecream.
Jonny will be here in a few days. I can't wait to share this all with him.

It's very surreal...like a beautiful dream. I hope I don't wake up too soon!

Well, I'm off to the beach. See you later!