Oaxaca City – a city full of artists, unrivalled culinary scenes and the classism and pretentiousness to match – was the city in which I accidentally became nomadic. Fresh to this life on the road, I still wanted to buy houseplants and full sized jars of local organic peanut butter, served by my favourite cashier whose Spanish was no longer too fast for me.
I expected to restore my shoe collection and hang up my art, to-do lists and affirmations on my rented wall. Tiptoeing around this vision, I finally found myself ‘going with the flow’ – as most of the travellers I met kept reiterating with shrugs and smiles. What I learnt though, is what this would mean for me, a travelling Black woman, who needs rooting and community, and has witnessed generations previous make new homes for themselves but has never herself done this before.