If Part 1 was about arriving — surviving a near-death migraine, boarding a night bus, finding paradise in an unexpected place — Part 2 is about what happens when paradise starts to crack.
The project was going well. Tsoka 3.0 — Santa — was maybe ninety percent complete. The watch system was working. Masimba on the frontend, me on the backend, twenty-four hours between us. We had done this before.
The Message That Changed Everything
I had ended things with my girlfriend before leaving for Victoria Falls. I sent her a greeting on Instagram. It sat unread for a long time. Then one day she replied. Not with anger. Not with the coldness I had come to expect. Just a reply. Calm. Open.
I told Masimba. He said immediately: ask her to come to Victoria Falls. I did. She said yes. Two days after her graduation party she arrived. We talked. We sorted through what had broken. She stayed two days and then returned home. Masimba watched all of this and said: I love that you are back with the love of your life. He was right. She is now my wife.
The Night They Left
Masimba had his own situation. There was a girl he loved in Gweru. He and David planned a night trip. The car would not start. A mechanic came, fixed the problem and told them to get it sorted in Gweru. They thanked him and left.
A few hours later Masimba called. His voice was calm. The particular calm of someone who has passed through shock and come out the other side. He told me they had been in an accident.
They had been following a beautiful car moving fast on an open road. Then the road changed — a section of broken tar, unexpected, unmarked — and the Mark X went off the road. They hit a tree. On Masimba's side. He had instinctively turned the wheel toward himself and away from David. He took the impact so David would not. That is Masimba. Even at the moment of collision, he was thinking about someone else.
The car was damaged beyond repair.
Haiti
This is when I called Masimba and told him: this place has turned from Hawaii to Haiti. He went quiet when I said it. I could hear it land.
I packed my bag in a house that had been full of noise and purpose and was now quiet. The project was not finished. The paradise was gone. I left. Not with bitterness. Masimba is my brother. What happened at the end of that trip did not undo what we built at the beginning of it — the platform, the friendship, or the conversation that brought my wife back into my life.
Life moves between Hawaii and Haiti constantly. The wisdom is not in avoiding Haiti. The wisdom is in knowing that Hawaii exists, that you have been there before, and that the bus back is always running. You just have to be willing to buy the ticket and get on.