Goodbye, I’ll Never Leave
My skydiving tour (four months, eight countries, eleven dropzones) concluded last week in Diani, where, appropriately, this whole thing started almost exactly a year before.
Tuesday, August 28. My last day on the Kenyan coast. I had a massage at Swahili Beach, enjoyed a curry at Coastal Dishes, and headed to The Sands at Nomad for a glass of white wine and maybe a scoop of their hazelnut ice cream. A little melancholy — it’s always hard to part with these cerulean waters — but nothing out of the ordinary!
As soon as I walked down the steps of the restaurant toward the billowing batik canopies of the beachside dining area and saw the familiar oceanscape open before me, it hit. I was leaving.
As soon as I walked down the steps of the restaurant toward the billowing batik canopies of the beachside dining area and saw the familiar oceanscape open before me, it hit. I was leaving. Not just leaving Diani, a short one-hour flight from my home in Kigali, Rwanda. After six years on the continent, I was leaving Africa to move back to the United States for a job in Washington, DC. And I was leaving my home dropzone.
I started to cry.
It was at Skydive Diani that I did my first tandem, completed AFF, earned my USPA A, B, and C licenses, did my coach rating, and attended all four boogies they’ve organized since September 2017, all in the space of one irrevocably life-altering year.
I shuffled myself into a seat in one of the dining alcoves facing the ocean and hid my face in my hands. I asked a passing waitress to borrow her notepad and pen to jot down some thoughts.
Why is this place, Diani, so important to me? How does one quantify the significance of place? If it’s measured in the delta between who you were before encountering a given place and how much that place changes you, then I can throw a lot of numbers at Diani.
I still remember arriving here in the middle of the night in late August last year. I was so giddy with excitement that I was squealing at the security guard. I had to do a happy dance to burn off the energy — at 4 am! I had the time of my life here on AFF. It should be illegal to enjoy something this much. December 2017 I came back for an entire month while working remotely. I was racking up jump numbers, desperate to get better, soaking up the sun, and forging incredible friendships. Whenever my taxi turns a right past the old Nakumatt and pulls up that bumpy Diani Beach Road, I just breathe easier. The air here is balsam for the soul.
I never expected to become a skydiver. Before last year, I didn’t even know there was a whole sport around it. People fall out of airplanes and then there is a parachute is literally the sum total of everything I knew about skydiving before May 2017.
But there was this Tinder guy and he was a skydiver so I said Hey let’s go to Diani. I’ll do a tandem and you do whatever you do. Famous last words.
I’d already been to Diani a few times and it’s pretty spectacular, so booking a weekend here has always been an easy choice. I was mostly interested in sea, sand, and sun, not the skydiving part, and looked at the tandem in much the same way one thinks about going to Six Flags. OOOH! A fun thrill thing followed by ice cream! Let’s!
But I mean, really. Famous last words.
I jumped. As soon as I landed, I knew. From the vantage point of a freshly-landed and adrenalinated (not a real word, but go with it) tandem student, I didn’t yet know quite how bad it was going to be, but I knew it was not going to be good!
So let’s quantify the significance of place. Diani is the direct cause of:
- 297 skydives in 365 days
- The decision to travel to ten countries and jump at thirteen dropzones over the past year
- One very expensive cutaway
- 28 helicopter jumps, 1 balloon jump, and PINK SKYVAN EXITS
- Measuring the costs of things in number of skydives, ex: cappuccino= 1/7 of a skydive. If I skip cappuccinos for a week, that’s one jump ticket!
- So many inspiring new people I call friends
- Focus, direction, and ambition not just at work, but in my personal time
It was here at The Sands at Nomad that I had dinner with that skydiving Tinder person last year. The night was so pretty, and the sailfish was so delicious, and the date was so great. It was all so very!
That’s what this restaurant had been for me that night: a beautiful spot for dinner and conversation. Lovely, but not heavy with significance.
That’s the starting point: the who I was before.
And now, the delta: Subsequently, the Sands at Nomad has been the source of endless pizza delivered to the dropzone. We’ve had many meals here after a day of jumping. I’ve even landed outside the restaurant directly into dinner during my AFF, because it’s Skydive Diani and that’s a thing they let you do on AFF. The skydiving Tinder date, who, like the restaurant he took me to, was also lovely but not heavy with significance? He’s now a valued presence in my life, and I’m happy for his friendship.
And now The Sands at Nomad is serving me the last glass of wine in Diani. There are a few other spots like it here on this little strip of coast that are so ritualized for me, they feel like home. Swahili Beach, where I always have my post-skydiving massage. Flamboyant, where Vincent does not even need to ask, but merely serve, the Old Kenyan and either one of the two off-menu tuna dishes that he knows I will want. Shashin-Ka, where I always get additional salmon sashimi and the chef knows and the chef obliges.
Once in DC, I’ll mostly jump at Skydive Orange. It will be my new home dropzone. But it will never be the same. No place can ever be Diani. Not only because Diani is a specific location with a longitude and latitude that places it in Kenya and nowhere else, but because of the life I have lived in the year since Diani made me a skydiver. It’s always going to be my real home dropzone.
