A few days ago I was looking through the drawer where I keep my passport. It wasn’t there. My heart stopped for what seemed like eternity. Thinking, thinking… Where could it have gone?! My ticket to the world. It was right here!!
Oh.
I remember.
Last month we sent our passports off to the Cameroon embassy in DC to get our visas. I felt so isolated. Somehow incomplete. My passport holds proof that my favorite adventures actually happened: Guatemala, New Zealand, Ireland. I couldn’t have dreamed those adventures…could I? To my great relief, my passport was returned to me today. Arrived in a FedEx envelope, that looked very normal. The FedEx carrier probably had no idea that what he/she was carrying happens to be one of my favorite belongings (besides my teddy bear of course). I cannot tell you the comfort I felt holding that little blue booklet in my hand once again. Just to make sure, I looked for each stamp. Yep, there’s one, two three, four and a new, unfamiliar stamp. Cameroon has already made its mark—and I haven’t even left yet!!
I love passport stamps. Every place you travel leaves its “mark” on you; may be something you learned, or saw, someone you met or a realization that changed your perspective. Good experiences, bad experiences, the thrilling and terrifying combine to create a new way of seeing.
“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard
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