I've got my ticket for my second trip to Kenya. Last time, I bought a bottle of Patron and went over to a friend's. We hardly touched it, though. I felt dislocated, part of a world suddenly grown incomprehensibly large. I felt that way once before, after buying a ticket to Peru. I went on a hike up in the Berkeley hills, amazed that I had seen so little of it before.

Eighteen hours of flying may seem like a tremendous journey now, but in fact I found the trip to Kenya disappointingly short. I wanted to struggle over the Atlas mountains or up the Nile, across the Sahara, by way of Khartoum where Gordon and the Mahdi's armies faced each other. My time in Africa was wonderful in every way, except that it was much too short. I still wish I were Alexander Humboldt, Stephen Maturin, or Charles Darwin, moving slowly through uncharted territory, immersed and impossibly distant.

This time I'm flying on miles, which is practically free, although I have an extra stop on the way there in Cairo. I didn't feel anything like the dislocation of the last time. Probably because I've been to Kenya, and Mpala, before, or maybe the sensation is proportional to the number of actual dollars I spend on the ticket. Instead, I had a strange dream that night. I missed my connection in Cairo and there were no flights until the next day. I left the hygenic nowhere-land of the airport and hired a taxi. The driver and I became fast friends and he took me all over the city. Driving through a crowded market, every face seemed beautiful to me. I thought that I could stay there and be happy, if only I didn't have somewhere to be. We delayed going back to the airport until the last possible moment. There were lines of wealthy passengers out the doors, and I missed my flight again. Collecting my thoughts, I realized that my luggage contained none of the things I should have packed for my field work.