show day

First fully-staged Mombasa show tonight, at the Aga Khan Academy, Likoni. It's going to be interesting. We're in a small lecture auditorium, so I'll be moving in and among the audience, in direct physical contact, in a way I haven't done before. No idea how they'll react - or what it'll feel like.

I slept a full 8 hours last night. Utter relief after 2 nights of virtually no sleep, due to loud bands and rowdy guests at the hotel we're at. Yesterday morning, I was in tears from sheer tiredness, and the attrition of constant noise. After 3 attempts at patient resolution and asking for alternatives, the hotel finally came up with a quiet room for me to move to. It took me getting really angry, demanding a refund, making it clear that I would check out if they didn't find a solution, for them to offer me a room on the other side of the complex, away from all the noise. A room they'd had all along, could have offered me the very first time I complained about the noise.

This morning, I swam in the sea. It rained last night, and the waves had a cool translucence to them that's almost more compelling than their full-on colour under blue skies. We've been rehearsing in water this week, to give me practice at moving through different mediums, negotiating obstacles. We joked about restaging Migritude as a water ballet. In the waves today, I asked my body to absorb the feeling of playing with every element - wind, water, sand, seaweed - so I can call up that memory in the theatre tonight.

All my dreams this week have been of motion. Of riding through streets in dalla-dallas, the open-air three-wheel taxis of the coast. Or on the pillion seats of bicycles - the other growing public transport option. Even on mkokotenis - the handcarts used to manually transport loads through the streets.