It was the first time I’d actually felt like a Lost Boy. You know that scene where they show up to the table and Peter tells them all just to imagine something great right before them and it will appear. And it does.
Thirteen of us hiking a mile with our packs on through red mud at 6 o’clock in the morning was no big deal. Riding a seven-hour bus and showing up to a clean hotel with mud all over us was no big deal. We are used to this. Looking like we had just come out of living in the woods for a month, which we kind of did, we thought that water coming from a shower head was a new invention.
Then we have another flight, cold shower down and another bout with a dusty city accompanied by people staring and yelling at us for being Mzungu. No big deal.
We’re all still looking like a hot mess when we arrive to Qatar. You may not have ever heard of it, but it is the richest country in the world. Remember Kevin in Home Alone II when he gets to the Plaza Hotel after being a middle-class child all his life. It was like that, too.
Fifty of us showing up to a pretty nice hotel didn’t become such a big deal until we arrived at this one. People were trying to help us with our bags, tell us to go have a meal while they prepared our rooms. Many of us had plans to go see this big and rich country and they wanted us to just chill and have a meal? Ugh, we all sighed with a bit of frustration but what’s a few minutes wait gonna do?
And then it happened. Fifty of us reach the second floor and what awaits us but a buffet. And this ain’t no Golden Corral.
First off, there was cheese. Do you know how long it has been since any of us have seen cheese? The kind that doesn’t taste like cow manure?
Second off, there were options. This probably should have been first off but cheese was too important not to mention right away. These weren’t any old luke-warm and growing stale options. There were healthy foods, GREEN STUFF. At this point, I don’t even know most of the stuff I ate except I woofed down any green thing I could find. There were tender meats and fresh cut salads and homemade pita chips and cheese from across the globe and weird stuff we didn’t know but ate anyway. All this stuff you can march on down to your local grocery store and grab right now but it’s been awhile for us.
The plates were white and hot, perfectly dried by the heat they were held under. The bar was made of marble and the cloth napkins were folded in neat triangles beside our shiny silver spoons. I ate with one of those napkins in my lap.
There were two sizes of forks, but who knows anymore how those things work. We’ve been using our sporks, a nice two-in-one combination I like to think was invented by Colonel Sanders for his mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese.
Most of all, with every bite you heard the sweet hum of fifty Lost Boys enjoying a free gourmet buffet. Forks clanked on ceramic plates in a giant room with cushioned seats and table cloths. None of us had ever appreciated food more in our life. Not one person wasn’t smiling and not one person didn’t eat way more food than they ever would’ve in real life.
But this wasn’t real life. In that moment, we were Kings and Queens enjoying a luxurious treat after being vagabonds across the great wide open. None of us were ashamed in the slightest that we probably still had dried mud in our ears and clothes that were rubbed ragged by hand washing. White teeth showing, bellys happy.
Half of us decided those big and rich plans weren’t worth it. After that kind of meal, one must get a good night’s rest in a fluffy white bed. After showering under not one but two showerheads, of course.
I sit here swatting flies off of my sweaty body but this month I have electricity so all is well in the house of this traveler.
Looking back on it, the experience was simply a magical treat one will always remember. That was the meal we didn’t even have to imagine. It was a surprise gift.
The best kind.
Wouldn’t it be nice to remember every meal that way? To create an original story for each one and never forget a single gift? I hope to never forget this feeling.
