[ WP ] You wake up one morning to find a boarding pass on your counter . Its destination is a country you know little about . You live alone , and you do n't have any friends . The flight leaves in ten hours .

It had been four-months, four painful, slow, dragging, heavily intoxicated months. After being cut loose by The Times in an'organizational restructuring,' and despite being given a rather generous severance package, I had slipped into a deep bout of depression and found meek solace in the bottom of the bottle. The severance pay was running out, and quickly, and I had squandered most of my remaining money on overpriced take-out Chinese food and bottles of rock-gut vodka. Rent was due, and there was no way I could afford my trendy Upper West Side apartment. 
 
 This all weighed down on me, heavily. The lack of money, the rattling hangovers and the general overwhelming sense of failure. I knew when The Times handed me my walking papers, it was n't my fault. It was just a bad shake, as my dad would have pointedly said. It still weighed down on me. 
 
 This particular morning, like many others, my head was pounding painfully in rhythm with the annoying buzz of my alarm clock. Each chirp, another explosion of pain and a sharp reminder that God's clear liquid never rewarded those that overindulged. Eventually, I mustered the energy to turn off the alarm clock and meander weakly to my living room. 
 
 I fell hard onto the couch, the moment of impact causing my stomach to revolt in anger for my arrogance. As my eyes slowly refocused to the bright light of the mid-morning, they located a small white envelope resting on my coffee table. I had n't placed it there, and had little idea where it came from. My initial thought was that my landlord had snuck into my apartment last night, having preemptive knowledge of my severance running out, with a notice to evict. 
 
 My heart stopped. 
 
 I reached anxiously out to the envelope, flipped it over and aggressively ripped open the back of it. A Turkish Airlines boarding pass, my passport and a small note fell into my lap. 
 
 I cautiously picked up the note, and in small hurried cursive it read: Come, David. 
 
 I picked up the boarding pass and flipped it open, searching for the final destination -- it was a flight from New York City, to Instanbul, with the final connection landing in Kinshasha, Congo. The flight left in 10-hours. 
 
 Kinshasa? 
 
 My mind raced. I had done work with the Peace Corps in Johannesburg, but had heard little about the DRC, and even less about Kinshasa during my time there. I had met a farmer who claimed to be from the DRC, when I inquired about what it was like, he gravely responded with,'it's a world filled with people who believe they're living in hell, more evil and desperate than anywhere imaginable.' My mind continued racing. 
 
 Who was this? Who was able to steal my passport from my safety deposit box? Who is calling me to the Congo? 
 
 I said'Kinshasa' aloud, and the name rolled smoothly off my tongue like an expensive wine. There was something undeniably tantalizing about it. I proceed to say,'Kinshasa, Congo.' The words together were ravenous. There was something so exotic, primal and mysterious about the names together. A word so fluid like Kinshasa mixed with the ruthlessness of the word Congo lit up in my mind like an elaborate painting. 
 
 I did n't know anything about Kinshasa, or the Congo, other than what that farmer had said. I did n't know who was beckoning me to this place. But somewhere, deep down, there was an instinctual drive pushing me towards it. As if this was where I could reinvent my life, leave New York City behind, leave the Times behind. I could salvage and abandon my train-wreck of a life by leaving it all behind. This was my chance. 
 
 I could be in Kinsahsa, Congo in a little over a day. 
 
 I raced to pack my bags.
