A Strange Moment

I remember one time, when I was in Africa, my parents phoned me on our cellphone while I was driving through a village. They asked me where I was, what I was doing, and as I looked out the window at the city we were driving through: everything is covered in a fine layer of rust-coloured dust, and people are selling all kinds of oddities out of tin buildings the size of closets with painted slogans such as "God is with us - Hair Salon", or "Jesus Saves - Car Parts". People are walking around in colourful clothing, carrying babies on their backs, random things on their heads, and knocking on car windows trying to sell people things. We're crowded in the most insane, illegal traffic I may ever see in my life, with big vans just full to bursting with people. Random things on the ground next to the road under trees: mattresses, tires, bed frames.

And I imagined my parents in the kitchen at home, talking on the phone to me, in such a different world, and I felt very strange, and in a way, lonely, because I knew if I attempted to describe where I was, sitting in the van next to people I loved deeper than they knew, looking out the window at the world that beheld me outside, that they wouldn't be able to understand it at all.