But that was long ago, and in another country.

Another country is rarely long ago for me, and, on the balance, I like that. Not always though. Sometimes instead of feeling like I am getting smarter every minute of every day from the unending challenges of expat life I just feel tired and lonely and rootless.

I love my life of constant challenge; I like it that nothing here is ever easy. It keeps me awake and alive. It keeps me always growing. I live here because it’s hard, because my life is filled constantly with confusion, contradiction, and difficult choices. I have always had a horror of complacency.

I suppose lonely and rootless isn’t complacent either.

1. The relentless central asian sun. It makes our yard and rosebushes grow at an alarming rate. It makes curtains fade and then rot. It creates dust. It turns the sky a brilliant blue day after day. It feels like home, yet I hate it.

2. The presence and absence of water. There is water leaking from taps, welling in puddles next to pipes, spraying from ancient sprinklers and pouring off of roofs for no visible reason. There is no precipitation.

3. The fruit trees, which convert the sun and the water to fruit, which is occasionally eaten and often left to rot on sidewalks. This is a sign on prosperity, I KNOW THAT, and yet the waste is painful. The fruit does not rot on the sidewalk in Nukus, or in Egypt. It rots in Tashkent, where most people can afford food and do not need to collect it from trees.

4. The mulberry trees, which smell like summer – remind me of growing up in Syracuse, remind me of swimming pools, and unaccountably, remind me of semen. There was a mulberry tree in our yard growing up, by the pool, which explains a lot. Mulberries fermenting on the sidewalk smell like chlorine, which also explains the evocation of the pool, and I suppose the semen, too. At least I’ve always thought that semen smells like chlorine.

It’s my wedding anniversary today. Go read the previous entry, which is far more fitted to the occasion than today’s.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.