A full year away from American things does something to your relationship with them. You stop taking for granted that they will be there. You stop assuming the particular arrangement of those things is inevitable or natural.
I was in Kenya from April 2025 to April 2026. I followed America through a phone. I saw the tariffs, the deportations, the DOGE cuts, the TikTok negotiations, through a feed compressed by distance into pure signal.
What I missed: the parking lots. The size of the grocery store. The particular smell of an American summer. The way people wave at you when you let them merge. The specific brand of small courtesy that Americans practice with strangers — the door held, the elevator door blocked with an arm.
What I noticed I missed less: the ambient noise of the news cycle. The feeling that every day requires a position on something. The specific exhaustion of being in the most surveilled information environment in human history.
I am back now. The things are here. I am taking notes again.
Gabriel Mahia writes from the intersection of U.S. institutional infrastructure and East African operational reality. This essay is part of the Year in Kenya series — twelve months, April 2025 to April 2026.