Dear reader:
Maramutse! Good morning!
Kigali smells amazing.
It was actually the first thing I noticed when I hit tarmac. I stepped off the plane, took a breath, and thought, "Wow. This is new and lovely." I noticed it even before the stars.
It rained all day the day I flew in, so the entire city has that wet world smell. Since I live in the Pacific Northwest, it's a smell I love. There's something about that way rain changed the world that I will never stop loving. To the eye, it washes things clean of dirt and grit so everything sparkles and seems new. But for those of us who tend to encounter the world nose first, it does something even more magical. When the rain falls, it mixes with oils on leaves, resin on bark, dried juices on fruit flesh, pollen in flowers, and it brings them to life. Like turning a television, the world goes, not from black and white exactly, but maybe a washed out pastel, to vibrant technicolor, it turns the olfactory sound of the would up to eleven.
Rain-kissed Kigali, on first blush, smells…in a word? Tropical. It is fruity and floral. Bananas and guava and passionfruit and avocado trees grow everywhere, and the scent and taste of fruit flesh straight from the yard makes for one delicious early morning snack. I haven't figured out what the floral notes are yet, but its not one of your big traditionals -- not roses, lilies, or irises, or even the magnolias and gardenias which is what I associate with the tropical wetlands of the American South. Underneath there are ripe green notes that give the air a feeling of rich, pungent….life. Full, rich possibility just seems to drip from every leaf and stem. Being here, I can see where some of the notes for Hermes Un Jardin Sur Le Nil came from. It has a sensuality to it that is hard to ignore.
Everything seems so alive. For a country currently in mourning for the mass genocide that occurred here twenty years ago this year, a country where they are still finding the bodies of those who were massacred, it must seem cruel, sometimes, to live in a place that is teeming with life and overshadowed, at times, by death and ruin.
Ashley, the lovely woman who brought me here, and her friend Bree were surprised and amused by my love for the smell of the air. They seem to be used to it. Perhaps after a few days here, I'll stop noticing, too. I hope not. There's something about the smell of the world newly encountered that I would like to hang onto for a little while.
Now I'm off to an ex-Pat Easter Saturday brunch. For those of you wondering, I'm wearing Le Labo Iris 39.
More soon!
I can sense it:
something important
is about to happen.
It's coming up.
It takes courage to enjoy it,
the hardcore and the gentle.
Big time sensuality.
We just met
and I know I'm a bit too intimate,
but something huge is coming up
and we're both included.
It takes courage to enjoy it,
the hardcore and the gentle.
Big time sensuality.
I don't know my future after this weekend --
and I don't want to.
It takes courage to enjoy it,
the hardcore and the gentle.
Big time sensuality.
~ "Big Time Sensuality," Bjork
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