Self-isolation journey of three weeks begins

I arrive at home from Jomo Kenyatta Airport past 2.30am. I am really back home, and besides myself with happiness. Seeing familiar things in my home feels unreal.

I am exhausted but too keyed up to sleep, so I just sit there silently letting everything sink in. The natural cold weather, not one brought about by air conditioning, feels like the best present I have ever had. My experience for the last three months has given me a new appreciation for life and home.

There are mixed emotions running through my mind. The fears that I had all these weeks are beginning to dissipate, and in their place I feel relief and comfort in my newly found freedom. I realise that my three-month situation had actually felt like being in jail but with a few freedoms. And I survived it. I survived it.

TEXT FRIENDS

After about an hour of just sitting on my couch absorbing everything, I decide to text all the friends, relatives and church family — the Baptist members at large in different places who prayed unceasingly for my safe return home.

I had not informed most of them that I was on my way home, therefore it will be a surprise when they wake up to my triumphant message. I receive a few replies from friends in different time zones who either haven't slept yet or who have already woken up.

I know that my phone will be buzzing off the hook with either calls or texts soon, and because I need rest, especially emotional rest from this experience which can be described using many different words, I opt to put my phone on silent mode until I am able to handle the joyous texts and calls.

Before I sleep though, I happily savour bitings of different meals which were prepared for me earlier in anticipation and faith that I would be allowed to home-quarantine.

I go to bed at 5am exhausted but very happy even though I sleep at around 6am. In what feels like minutes later, I am woken by the incessant vibration of my phone from calls and texts that I had anticipated, and after trying to ignore them to no avail, I realise that the only solution is to switch it off if I plan to get any sleep.

SELF-ISOLATE

I wake up in the afternoon after many blissful hours of sleep. I open my eyes slowly, afraid that it was all a dream but it isn't. I am really home.

I lie there thinking that even though I wish I could walk out of my house and exercise, walk around and feel the environment and probably see my family and friends, I can't be more grateful that I was allowed to self-isolate rather than go to a quarantine facility – I will be indoors for 21 days, and though this may seem like such a long, long time, from my very long journey to this point, I know that it will be a short 21 days.

It will be a long walk into reality, getting my actual life back on track, with so many things left unattended to while I was away, but I am very hopeful and look forward to actually doing meaningful things soon.

I also look forward to the challenges ahead because after what I have been through, my life will never be the same again. I’ve had a lot of time to think, time that has mostly been spent thinking about my life and what I can do better.

I am grateful to the Almighty God, to my family and friends, including my employer Daniel, who has supported me in every way that he could to ensure that my stay in Nigeria was as comfortable as possible.

And how can I forget our client who paid my steep airfare back home? This is not all, I will be forever grateful to my church family here in Kenya, in Lagos and in other parts of the world as well as strangers who became friends online, many of whom I may never meet, but who encouraged me to hang in there.

I have told you about my Staycation family, the individuals who work in the hotel that became my home for the three months I was stranded in Nigeria.

GOOD WRITER

Thank you, friends. And Lanre, my Nigerian contact and friend who tirelessly walked with me every step of this journey and actually saw my frustrations in person.

I will never forget how he generously gave of his time to drive me around Lagos and to help me find a way back home when he could have been attending to many matters that needed his attention. Thank you my friend.

I also thank Caroline Njung’e, the Nation editor who has been guiding me along the way. I thank her for encouraging me when I would sometimes feel too low to write – she tells me that I have the hallmarks of a good writer.

Perhaps I will start writing. Finally, I thank the Nation Media Group for giving me a platform to tell my story, which made it possible for me to interact with many. Putting what I was going through on paper helped me to cope better.

Ms Ndinda is Research Manager, Transform Research Africa Ltd. She arrived back in Kenya on June 19 from Nigeria, where she had been stranded since March 21