Welcome to our brand new life in Zanzibar. It feels odd to still be referring to it as ‘brand new’ considering we’ve been here for 6 months, but in truth, I only just feel like we’ve settled in. This was in part mainly related to our prolonged search for a house – so many options, none of which ticked the main boxes for our family living – and slowed down by a broken foot that I acquired at the end of my first week on the island. Nevertheless, the cast eventually came off (two months later) and we were able to negotiate an affordable rent on a dream house, our shipment of furniture arrived and was installed (read: dumped), the furniture was assembled and we were finally ready to move in. It then felt that the two-month search had squeezed itself into the last 24 hours of packing all of our pieces that had spilled throughout our small Airbnb bungalow, and we were finally in our new house late in the evening, way after dark. In the starkness of our half-opened boxes, piled up chairs, and dark, unlit garden and pathway, a wave of fearful anxiety washed over me as I made my way to the car for one final haul from the bungalow. I had that same knot in my stomache that I did as a child overcoming her fear of the dark as she forced herself to calmly walk through the unlit living room and hallway to her bedroom. Keeping that same focus on the steps ahead, I was startled by some reflection in the bushes which made me stop in my tracks. I couldn’t quite figure out what was there until I realized that this was my first ever sighting of fireflies!! In my entire almost-middle-aged life and throughout all my travels, I had never before come across fireflies outside of the pages of some novels and my daughter’s stories. And here, at the end of an exhausting, stressful day, my anxiety was met with the light, joyful playfulness of fireflies. I could not stop smiling.
The garden is better lit now with fewer darkened corners
around the bushes, but I still look for the fireflies when I am walking in at
night. I am so grateful that they continue to find dark spots from which to
flicker their light, which I always take as the same happy greeting as that
first day: we’re happy to see you, welcome home!
