Leaving in the Dark

The Night Before

There’s something surreal about leaving a life behind in the dark.

No final sunrise. No long goodbye. Just bags, tired eyes, and the quiet feeling that something had ended before I’d fully caught up to it.

The night before I left, a friend made Jollof rice. We ate, laughed, drank wine, and stayed up longer than we meant to. Neither of us made it a big deal. Maybe that was the point.

By the time I got home, it was already late. I packed the last few things in a rush, zipped up my suitcase, and headed straight to the airport without sleeping.

The weeks leading up to it had been nothing but movement: ending my tenancy, putting things into storage, wrapping up loose ends, leaving a job and a version of life that had given me structure for years. By the time I got into the cab, there was no grand cinematic moment. Just momentum.

A Soft Landing Before Takeoff

I’d booked a Business Class ticket using a mix of credit card points and airline vouchers. I wouldn't usually pay for that kind of comfort. But this wasn’t a holiday squeezed between meetings or a quick reset before going back to the same routine. It felt like a real departure, and I wanted to mark it as one.

What that meant, I wasn’t entirely sure. But I think it started with not rushing.

The lounge gave me something I hadn’t had in weeks: stillness.

I got there three hours early, not because I needed to, but because I could. I sat there at 6am eating eggs and toast, running on adrenaline and no sleep, watching the sun rise through the glass. It was quiet. And for the first time in a long time, I was too.

I kept thinking about what I was actually moving toward. Not the itinerary. I knew that part. But the version of myself I was hoping to find on the other side of all this space. I was thirty in a few months. I had savings, a loose plan, and a deep suspicion that if I didn’t go now, I never would. That felt like enough. Just about.

That moment stayed with me because it was the first time leaving felt real. Behind me was the chaos of packing up my life. Ahead of me was something I couldn’t fully name yet.

The Shape of the Trip

I had the outline of a plan: a few solo days in Nairobi, a safari with friends from London, Uganda for a wedding, then the coast, and eventually my 30th birthday with my sister. Not mapped out to the hour, but intentional enough.

I also had a friend in Kenya who made the transition softer than I expected. She spoke Swahili to locals on my behalf, helped me get better rates, and pointed me to restaurants I never would have found on my own. She knew the city in the way that only comes from living it.

By the end of the trip I was dropping “sasa” and “sawa sawa” into conversation like I’d been there for years. That kind of grounding made a bigger difference than I realised at the time. It’s easy to underestimate what it means to have someone who already knows the place.

The Beginning of Motion

Leaving London didn’t feel like an ending.

Not yet.

It felt like movement. Like I had stepped out of a life I had been outgrowing. Into one I didn’t understand yet. I didn’t know what Nairobi, Uganda, the coast, or the months ahead would unlock. I just knew I needed distance from everything familiar.

Sometimes that’s all you get at the start.

Not certainty. Not clarity. Just the decision to go.