Bostonian B’s: My Roots

I have been half-jokingly referring to Boston and Cape Cod as my “home village” since 2010. I was raised in a suburb of Boston, I attended a private high school in a suburb closer to Boston, I am a Boston College (BC) Eagle, I spent my adolescent summers living at my family’s home on Cape Cod, and I have slept on countless couches/beds/floors of family and friends all over beantown. My roots are spread amongst some of the more privileged pockets of the Greater Boston Area and Cape Cod. BC maroon/gold, Celtics green, and Patriots red/white/blue tribal colors adorn my wardrobe, and I seasonally drink up that dirty water.

Whenever I arrive at my family’s cape home - as a student after finals exams, and as a professional after long travels and intense work weeks- I observe and savor an unclenching sensation in my chest… a subtle, soothing release of a tension that often I had not even realized was present until it was released. Mindful movements in sunshine, swimming in saltwater, and meals with family and friends accentuate that unclenching sensation in my chest so unique to the feeling of home/belonging.

When asked what I missed most while living abroad, I’d always say that everything begins with “B”:

Beers

The craft beer trend was peaking in the USA when I moved abroad, and didn’t come to South Africa until ~5 years later, and Botswana a few years after that. American expat friends and I used to pack bottles of American craft beer in our checked bags as gifts for each other, and once the trend hit South Africa, we would drive across the border and fill up our vehicles with cases of craft beer (my favorite was hefeweizen). Then, the first craft brewery emerged in Botswana in 2017. I likely purchased more of Botswana’s first American Pale Ale than anyone else in the country 2017-21. It was truly my favorite to consume/share, and its logo features an eagle portrait reminiscent of the BC mascot, Baldwin.

Burritos

I never pass through Boston without eating several Ana’s Tacqueria Super Burritos. This habit was developed as a university student, and the months/years after graduating, especially when crashing on the couch of my most musically-inclined and creatively-stimulating friends of Banana Phonetic.

Bagels

My Brooklyn Jewish fam and friends may say you can’t get a good bagel outside of New York City, but I have eaten excellent bagels in Boston, Philly, DC, Boca Raton, San Francisco, Austin, and even London. The best bagels I ever ate in sub-saharan Africa were home-made with colleagues- one of my fondest/tastiest team-building exercises with Peek Vision and my BUP HI fam.

Bandwidth

For many years early in my career, the most cost-effective and reliable way to transfer digital data across the Atlantic Ocean was by physically transporting CD’s and/or external hard drives. Wildly expensive long distance phone calls were more reliable for meetings with American colleagues than calls over the Internet on services like Skype or Zoom, which simply did not work more often than they did. Adapting to weak/intermittent Internet, (often nonexistent for hours/days at a time) was part of my everyday life. So, whenever I swung through Boston, I would binge on bandwidth- backing up gigabytes of photos/videos from my “global south” adventures, and downloading terabytes of torrents of TV shows, movies, yoga videos, music albums, etc. onto external hard drives to bring back to Botswana and share with friends and colleagues via cables. When I departed Botswana in 2021, some younger, newer American expat friends would sometimes complain that Netflix would occasionally take a few mins to buffer. Kids these days don’t realize how good they have it…

Buddies

I never traveled to the US for work without prioritizing quality time with family & friends (i.e. “buddies”). I always scheduled travels around social ceremonies like family reunions, school reunions, bachelor parties, weddings, etc. Over my decade of working with UPenn, I had developed my go-to seat on the one-way megabus route from Philly to Boston, which I would book the same time as my flights, as it was always my final leg home.