Fear Constructed

Fear is a brutal force when faced with it far from familiarity. 

Airline food. 

I do not know what that pancake looking thing is. 

Is this meat? 

I believe all of this was made for martians. 

Where are my M & Ms? 

I wonder what is on this cream colored stained carpet?

Is there something in this bed? 

Hand sanitizer please. 

This bus is dusty. How do asthmatics possibly survive?

Water got in my feet. I can hear Jenny screaming in my head. 

Will that dog attack me?

What are those men saying to me?

Should I keep my line walking ahead towards them?

Where is your hand sanitizer? Can I use it?

My whiteness I can't hide. There is no blending in here. 

What are those women staring at? 

Why are these people surrounding us?

I have taken many things for granted. Everything really.

My heart is beating fast. There are many children and they are crowding in fast. 

Who keeps grabbing me?

Hundreds of handshakes and shoulder bumps. Hundreds. 

I am sinking in mud. 

This market is killing me Smalls.

Can I pour that hand sanitizer over my feet and set them on fire please?

Comet. Hm. Would that work? 

I am holding my breath in the hospital. Yet there is no yellow fever here. 

That kid just hugged me. For a long time. 

Best and fearful feelings arise.

I love that kid. 

Hand sanitizer please!!!

I am fighting a battle against reality. I'm good at fiction. 

My body is stronger than I give it credit for. 

How high up are we going?? 

Is that little stick fence down there supposed to catch me? My god. 

That cushion she is sitting in looks 150 years old. 

Her white robe is spotless though. 

There is something red on my forehead. 

The sharpness in my chest takes my breath away. 

I am in the way to the hospital by morning. 

What will I find? 

Does this hospital have The same conditions as the last one we toured?

Clean hallways greet me. 

The doctor is in familiar crisp white. 

My ease returns. Familiarity is the most soothing feeling I have had here yet. 

I feel the singe of burning tears well up in my eyes. 

Swallow hard and get on with it.

It is only fear. 

Fear imagined, fear constructed, fear consumed.

False Events Appearing Real.

Hand sanitizer as I leave? 

Who cares. 
I have my meds.  
That was faster than any American hospital I have ever been in.
So much for fear.

As usual, no matter where I am, I am and will be ok.

It is dirty here. And beautiful, hopeful, ambitious, and real. 

Ethiopia does not hide itself. 

It is alive. 

Ethiopia has broken me. 

Thank God.