It is so strange, walking into a place in a completely foreign country - especially one as alien, within that foreignness, as the hotel I'm currently in - and hearing music that jerks you backward into a memory - makes clear how far you are. Songs almost always grab me - I get teased that I hear what's playing in a restaurant better than my companions, no one else notices (or cares?). I have probably, at some point, called you because I heard a song that reminded me of you suddenly, reader. It's par for my course.

When I was in Mwanza a few weeks ago, Mel and I went to a posh hotel on the lake for dinner and the first song on was "Hearts and Bones", Paul Simon, which I had been wanting to hear for the whole preceding week. It's a song from Kolz and my mom, and it does get stuck in your head. I was lucky that Mel understood people crying at weird times, because there I was, looking out at the lake, weeping into my soda. Partly relief at having gotten there, partly realizing how much further from home I was.

Today I sat down to work in the Kilimanjaro Kempinski hotel's coffee bar, which has wireless and sort of inordinately expensive drinks - all dark wood and potted palm trees, modern glass, fountains. But it is mzungu worker central, because everyone knows you can sit here undisturbed and the wireless is free and fast. I am feeling very remote right now, tired all the time. I know I need to work but I don't know where to start, nothing is moving. And this piano piece, "Big My Secret" from the soundtrack of The Piano came on. I used to know how to play the first little part of it, when I could play. And now there is a small ache of something else to go along with the lonely and stuck feeling.

It is always the moment, though. When Mel and I went back to the same posh hotel the next day, they were playing Paul Simon again, followed by Tracy Chapman, like before, and it became clear that that was all they had. Like when I was in Bukoba and the same 30 seconds of a broken Celine Dion duet were playing (tho' that was more rage, then just laughter). Today the music has cycled on to some random piano instrumentals...now it's "Send in the clowns." And so the ache passes. I feel like I have to reassure the folks at home - it passes. But the moment 5 minutes ago will stick, the passing ache filed away with the other ones.

I want to come home.