Fearing the unknown

This time I help my boss carry my luggage as we take it up to my room in the motel. From the outside it doesn’t look like much, neither does the location but once inside my fears subside. It is a spacious en suite room with a huge bed. The bed is covered in a soft silver embroidered duvet cover and supported with a dark wooden headboard that matches the dresser.

We put my bags down in the corner and then my boss finally opens the plastic bag he’s been carrying around. “I thought you will want milk in morning,” he says as he takes out a bottle of milk decorated with cows. He also takes out a bunch of bananas and a box of chocolate brownies. It is my welcoming gift, slightly absurd to me, but I realise it’s a very sweet gesture and thank him.

He tells me he will fetch me “Maybe 11:30, so you can get much sleep.” We then begin our awkward goodbye’s and he reminds me I can now use internet to email my parents, then as an afterthought, as I’m about to shut the door behind him he says, “You must lock.” The paranoid South African in me suddenly becomes suspicious at the comment, after all why wouldn’t I lock the door behind me. I’m suddenly filled with fear, fuelled by the unknown. I know nothing about the country I’m in, the place I’ll be working at, or where I am going.

I want to let my family know where I am, that I’m safe in a motel, if anything just to reassure myself but it doesn’t take me long to discover that when Mr Kim said I could use the internet at the motel he meant the wifi, using a laptop I didn’t yet have. So I promise myself I will get up early to go in search for an internet café so my parents don’t panic.

Exhausted from the longest journey I decide to flop straight into bed and into the soft duvet covers. Flopping into bed proves impossible though, it is rock solid. To me the mattress, like the headboard, is made of wood, not springs or foam. I’m too tired to care though and happily stretch out my feet and assume my usual position, diagonally across the bed, corner to corner.

I’m suddenly awoken by noises, except I’m not sure if it’s real or if I’m dreaming. The noises sound close, loud, I get the feeling someone is trying to come in, like someone is banging down my door. I hide under the blankets frozen with fear.

Next I know I wake up again, it’s still pitch black in my motel room and I can’t believe it’s not morning yet, I feel for my watch in the dark but unable to see the time, I brave stepping out of the safety of the blankets to hit the lights. Its 7:30 am, I’ve only managed seven hours of restless sleep and somehow I feel wide awake. I’m still uneasy, unsure whether I was just dreaming, exaggerating the unfamiliar noises in the night or if someone was trying to get into my room.

I find the mobile phone I brought with me, it’s on its last legs, and doesn’t work in Korea at all, but is loaded with all my familiar contacts and still has the South African time on it. Looking at it comforts me as I think about what everyone back home is doing. Then wondering why the sun isn’t glaring through my windows yet, I go to take a peek outside. I discover the windows are shielded by wooden shutters. Now this I could get used to I think, as I slide them closed again shutting out all natural light. I then head for the shower, deciding there’s no sense in trying to get back to sleep.