I didn’t expect it to come from food.

The first week, I survived on excitement. The second week, I noticed the gap. By the third week, it hit me fully — nothing tasted familiar. Bread was sweet. Rice was bland. Chicken felt apologetic.

Back home, food was certainty. Even on bad days, there was something grounding about knowing what a meal would taste like. Abroad, every meal felt like a compromise.

The first time I searched “African food store near me,” I walked twenty minutes in the cold to a small shop squeezed between a hair salon and a betting store. Inside, the shelves were packed tightly, the prices higher than I expected, and the smells instantly familiar.

I stood there longer than necessary, just breathing.

I bought palm oil, crayfish, pepper. When I got home and cooked, the taste wasn’t perfect — the tomatoes were too sweet, the pepper different — but it was close enough to unlock something emotional.

That meal didn’t just feed me.

It reminded me who I was before relocation stripped everything down to basics.

Food became my first anchor abroad.