Africa

I knew this would happen. I remember like it was just last week, sitting at the Med with my mom over drinks and tapas telling her I wanted to start in South America for my trip and end in Africa because I didn’t think I would be able to leave Africa. That intuition, like most intuitions, proved to be utterly true. Now I have a ticket out of here and every cell in my body wants to stay on the Dark Continent.
Africa is intoxicating. It is completely tantalizing and addicting.
Now, keep in mind when I say Africa, I have yet to see much of Central Africa and none of West Africa, just to clarify that before I continue, but I have seen a good deal of the rest now. In Africa there is a rawness and wildness you cannot find anywhere else. To be truthful, Africa is completely lawless. It really is. You see both the best and the worst of humanity and only get through most days and situations because of an invisible but cohesive web of basic humanity that threads through your interactions. That and luck.
It cannot be overstated that in Africa, absolutely anything can happen any day. That is why I love it, it’s the perfect place for someone like me who feels suffocated by routine.
I planned to go from Egypt to South Africa overland, but had to take two unexpected flights because of rebel attacks and civil war that sprung up unexpectedly. It feels like there is more life squeezed out of a single day in Africa than a month somewhere else.
I have experienced so many extremes in my 8 months here. I have seen inconceivable poverty and unrivaled opulence. I have been drenched by rain and scorched by the sun. I’ve crossed the equator several times and looked up at the starry skies in both hemispheres, unobstructed by urbanization’s glare. I have seen the sun the biggest and reddest I have ever found set behind an acacia tree in the Serengeti and sand dunes in the desert. I have seen explosive coastlines and towering sand dunes, churches, mosques and huts. I’ve seen the pyramids, I’ve seen lions and zebras. I have seen refugees right after their homes have been burned pleading with their eyes into mine for something I had no idea how to give.
I have seen political rallies full of false hope and seen them turn to violence. I have seen a once-thriving capital turn to a ghost-town of oppression. I’ve seen shepherds with their flocks, women with painted faces, turbans, tribesmen with tattooed faces and gaping earlobes, women who’s only exposure to the world was a small slit in the cloth that covered them over the eyes, colorful tribal clothes and blankets.
I have danced in a mud hut to a drumming that escapes no one’s pulse as the candlelight cast shadows that leapt with the yells that echoed around the walls. I have been absolutely positive that I was about to die. I felt baptized by the spray of Victoria Falls in the high season, hanging on for dear life so that they wouldn’t wash me over the rope bridge. I have sat in more churches in Africa than the rest of my life put together and listened to the prayers of some of the most impoverished people in the world. I have been grabbed and groped and stared at because of my skin color. I have been feared and a curiosity and spectacle for it as well. I have also been an honored guest and allowed to do things other people would never be able to do because of it.
I have felt real fear. I have been hassled more than I could ever imagine before coming here. I have learned to sit and do nothing. I have had more communication errors and lack of communication because of such a vast language barrier. I have laughed and laughed at this crazy life we find ourselves in and the incubation of our culture that affects us so much and blinds us to other possibilities in life. I have laughed because sometimes that was all I could do.
I have heard stories of so may that have stitched a fabric of other ways of life in my consciousness; stories of hope and courage as well as stories of bone-chilling evil that crushes my chest. I have been told things that I would never write down for fear that the atrocities are so massive they could almost come to life if put onto paper. Why did people speak so openly of their own private hells to a stranger like me? Maybe some things are so evil they must be released or they will choke the life out of you. I know I didn’t want to hear them and I still wish I never had.
I have met people that it is inconceivable to me how they go on. Things I have learned about in Africa have challenged everything I have ever thought about and known. It has made me realize that I don’t understand anything,
I look back on what I have done and see that I was completely alone while at the same time never alone. It was only by the good grace and compassion of the local people I met along the way that I could get through each day much less survive on the whole.
Nothing is easy in Africa. It tests you. Things that should be simple never are. Noting is what it seems. The psyche and culture here is completely different from other places in the world. It is a place of extremes, a place of thriving markets, breathtaking scenery, violence, chaos, traffic, passionate music and blood-red soil.
Every African I met said they would never leave this place permanently. The white South Africans I met said if their land was taken away they would go with it because to leave Africa would mean to die. There is so much mystery and rawness on this continent. I think it would be fair to say that Africa is the true embodiment of passion in its purest sense, for better or worse.
T.I.A. (This Is Africa) has become a cliché now, but for anyone who has ever been here, they know that sometimes that is all you can say much of the time. How this place has changed me, I haven’t even began to look at that landscape. I feel the same, but can you really tell when you are leaving a place, and places seem to have hidden lessons you don’t encounter until years down the road. If anything it has made me more confident in who I am but more unsure about everything else in life. But I know it has gotten under my skin. The thought of leaving makes me feel like I am dying a small death myself. I can’t explain it, these last 8 months. Their meaning is poignant but at the same time hidden even to me. Part of me feels that because I did this I can do anything, part of me just wants to cry for both what I’ve seen and what I’m leaving.
I’ll be back. That’s for sure. But now, it’s time to leap and to trust. That’s all I can do as I leave this behind for what I have no idea. I thought I would be more certain of something after leaving but nothing is clear. How can time go so fast? How many lifetimes exist in one life? I don’t know where I’m going but at the same time, I’m always there.

I hope for nothing
I fear nothing
I am free