Despite being a courtesan of travel, stricken hard and often with wanderlust and with new plans to visit new places as often as a college-budget can manage, I cannot stand flying. I'm not sure why exactly -- maybe it's the cramped spaces or the extended time in my seat or the long nights filled with insomnia. But none of that really seems to bother me. However, I do know one thing about flying. As soon as I place my bags under the seat in front and turn off all electronic devices, I refuse to look out the window.
That's been true since I was a child, when I would ask my Dad to put down the window shade so that I wouldn't have to see outside the plane. Back then, it terrified me, but it never held me back from vacationing with the family. And today, although the habit continues, I never let it hold me back from adventuring around the world. And so here I am, yet again, sitting on another plane on another trip having a lovely conversation with two doctors from Germany as we drink airplane bottles of wine. With the window shade down.
We are on a flight from Lilongwe -- the capital city of Malawi and my home for the previous two months -- to Blantyre. I have just finished an incredible summer conducting research on malaria at the central hospital in Lilongwe. Incredible, but exhausting, and difficult.
Simply living in this country has given me an equally formative educational experience about the healthcare system in a developing country as working in the largest hospital in this country has. These two months have given me a severe bacterial infection that lasted over a week in the midst of an Ebola outbreak on the same continent that had been making daily headlines on the television in front of the couch where I spent my agonizingly long recovery. They have also given me a bite from a stray dog during a run on my third day in the country and a subsequent three week period of treatment that climaxed with my discovery that the country of Malawi -- not even its largest and most comprehensive hospital system -- lacks access to the full treatment plan for rabies.
Fortunately I survived. And despite the several periods of illness, I found myself healthy and twenty minutes into the air already thinking about how much I would miss the country when I arrived back in the United States. I thought about the deep friendships I made with coworkers and housemates and random Malawians throughout my stay, and I realized I didn't know the next time I would be able to see them. Moments later, I did something that I had never done before on an airplane -- I opened the window shade. I wanted to see the beautiful country, my home, for one last time.
And then I saw, clearly visible above the clouds, Sapitwa peak, the point of highest elevation on Mount Mulanje and in the southern half of the African continent. And my mind began to race back to our backpacking trip up the same peak. To moments of both exhilaration and exhaustion on the M1 highway as five of us dodged eighteen-wheelers passing other eighteen-wheelers tilted at 40 degree angles, alongside pedestrians biking and walking along a nonexistent shoulder. To moments of pure confusion as we drove through the city streets of an unfamiliar Blantyre on a Friday night, along dusty winding trails that led to Mulanje, gifting us with potholes and ditches as frequently as our questionably sound rental car could handle.
It brought me along the over ten-thousand-foot hike, to free climbs up rock faces and switchbacks up the vertical edge of the plateau. Our conversations twisted as frequently as the path before us, bonding over sweat and exhaustion and peanut butter sandwiches and the hard-earned round of Carlsberg beers waiting for us at the hut where we slept the night before our peak ascent. And then it brought us to the top of the range, the point which met my eyes over the surface of the clouds. On the peak we sat for about an hour -- myself, the rest of our group, and our guide Fraction. And it was there that Fraction, our very new and now very close friend, told us about his struggle with HIV/AIDS. A young man of twenty with a girlfriend and kids and a disease that has taken over part of his life, he continues to guide groups of travelers up and along the peaks of the Mulanje Massif as a full time job, working to take care of the family he expressively loves. And for that powerful hour, as clouds passed beside us and the world existed two days of walking away from us, we talked. And we learned a little bit more about life. And we shared a great moment.
Since our climb up Mulanje, I had spent little time thinking about Fraction. When the rest of my stay was filled with hard work during the days and more travels and adventures in the evenings and on the weekends, I was left with incredibly little free time. The mind is always racing to find any and everything else it can embrace, leaving little time for people like Fraction to sink in, from the mind to the heart and soul. I realized that, although I have every intention to return to this country, I truly don't know if I will ever see Fraction again. I thought about him and his stories from all of his trips up and down the mountain and his stoic but undeniably warm spirit and his family and a disease that inevitably exists in the background of it all. It bothered me deeply that I had never found the chance until now to step back. The haze of experiencing life outside of the United States gave me plenty of time to see and understand the world and very little to understand how it made me feel. And it was while I looked out the window that I realized how much my time with Fraction and my relationship with him and the period we all spent climbing Mulanje together meant to me. And through all of the trips and the stories and the memories, it was this that I wanted to think about as the plane brought us back to the United States.
Through all of the incredible ups and downs that comprise the busy lives we lead, take the time to look out the window. Remember the things that made you happy or sad, the things that moved you. Remember the things that you think about when you look out the window and your mind and spirit wander. Remember the people that took part in the incredible experiences you had.They may not be in all of the photographs you took, but they saw the same views, felt the same feelings, and shared the same moments as you did. And they deserve the special place in your memory.