Every time I pass through Nanyuki, I get the feeling that this invisible line isn't so much there to divide the world in two as to remind it that a center still exists.
And that, if you want, you can even stop there.
Not to plant a flag, but to catch your breath.
To be at the center of the world, of things, of your own life.
To try to find balance, and not for circus purposes.
The Equator is not a spectacular place.
It is a line drawn with a ruler on a map that no one has ever really seen in person.
A kind of geographical promise: here, theoretically, everything should be balanced.
Day and night, hot and cool, north and south, clockwise and counterclockwise.
Theoretically, that is.
Then there is life, which, as always, doesn't care about theories.
Yet stopping there, even just for a watered-down coffee or a photo taken by a souvenir seller wearing a reflective vest, has something therapeutic about it.
It's not tourism. It's a metaphysical break with a dirt parking lot.
Stopping in the middle of something.
Not because you've arrived somewhere, but because for once you're not running away.
The Equator doesn't ask you to choose which side you're on.
It just asks you to be.
And that alone, today, is a courageous, counter-cultural act.
In a society that has stopped distinguishing between moral and criminal, between choice and opportunism, between dignity and visibility, where it is enough to be politically correct by putting an asterisk on a letter and you can cover any perfect stranger who has more visibility than us with manure, where war is ugly but does not hurt us, the idea of a line that does not judge but simply passes by is surprisingly reassuring.
There is no algorithm here.
There is no alignment or hashtag.
There is a latitude that asks no questions.
You cross the equator as you cross certain moments in life: without fanfare, without certificates of authenticity.
One step forward, one step back, a slightly embarrassed laugh.
And then you're gone. But something remains. A kind of internal reminder that says: look, balance is not a tightrope walker's pose, it's a daily practice. And often a failed one.
Around here, under the huge sky of Laikipia, with Mount Kenya watching everything with the air of someone who has seen too much to be surprised anymore, the concept of center ceases to be abstract.
 
It becomes physical. Dusty. Imperfect. Like real things.
The Equator doesn't save anyone, let's be clear.
It's not a miraculous line. But it suggests. It indicates.
It reminds us that we can live without always leaning to one side.
That we can cross the world with the lightness of a journey, a discovery, an unarmed curiosity.
And so every time I leave Nanyuki, leaving that imaginary line behind me, I feel like I've put something back in its place.
Not the world. No, let's not exaggerate.
But at least my inner compass.
Which, for a few meters, before going crazy again, returns to point south, vaguely resembling common sense.