Exhale.

Remembering is weird because sometimes it’s wrong.  Well, wrong may not be the right word, but… inaccurate.  The best example I can think of is summer camp.  I’ll be looking through old pictures: scaling rock walls, kayaking down the Royal Gorge, smiling with tan cheeks and tangled hair, and I think, “Well, summer camp was the coolest time of my life EVER.   I was doing the coolest things in the world, without a care in the world, and my teeth look so WHITE.” 

And that gets to be true, that’s how you remember it.  Until you find your old camp journal.  And you realize that you were homesick and sunburned and had lost your shoe, you didn’t like the smell of the tent and you were lonely and there were mosquitoes in your s’mores and you don’t even like s’mores and as a matter of fact, summer camp was not how you remembered it all.  In fact, it sounds kind of crappy.

I made myself become very, very aware of the summer camp phenomenon before I arrived back in Cape Town.  I rehearsed over and over in my mind that the romance of a night without electricity, the mysterious edge of rough streets, the appeal of standing out, may not really be all as sexy as I remember.  The newness and excitement will have faded.  Life will be more… well, more like real life.

But I can say that I as my plane began it’s descent just a few days ago, and Table Mountain came into view, I felt that excitement again.  The fog hung low and clung to the rocky tops, the sky was blue and the sunlight was much more yellow than it ever is in the States.  My heart raced and I wrung out my hands repeatedly because that fog and that light and that mountain felt wildly like home.  And the country smelled just how I had remembered:  like gasoline and warm skin and that smell was as familiar as my own hands. 

But familiar can turn into monotonous if you look at it the wrong way.  Riding the mini bus with 25 of your new closest friend can easily change from exhilarating to frustrating.  Buying electricity vouchers changes from hilarious to expensive.  Happiness can’t be based on the newness and the excitement anymore.  It has to have its roots in something different. 

So, I suppose the contentment or the joy that I have found thus far on my journey has different origin and a different feel then what it was for the first take of Africa.  It’s more of a calmness, a peace this time around.  A feeling that maybe things aren’t new or exciting but they still are beautiful.  They may not be as loud, as bright, as colorful, as they were when I first felt this African life, but they will still change me, shape me, help me understand how to…become. 

And I guess it makes sense that it is in this sort of calm and in this sort of peace that people begin to understand. It can’t be in the hectic waterfall jumping, elephant riding, adventure quenching, love falling life that I experienced first time around.  It has to be found in the realizations, the alterations, the clarifications.  If there is anything I have learned from being a yoga instructor, it’s this: you can’t spend your whole life on the inhale.  Sometimes, you need a full out exhale to really understand where you are. 

Back to Africa Movement

This is approximately hour nine of sitting in the Heathrow airport.  Hour six of being fairly awake and coherent and about hour three of being supremely caffeinated.  This is also hour one of attempting to write again after leaving Africa.  I suppose some of  this lack of words is due to tremendous amount of school work.  They get you in year three of your undergrad degree; college got hard. (Part of that could be due to the fact that my major was Finance once again and no longer Contemporary African Dance.)   

But, other than being busy, my fingers didn’t feel like typing.  They didn’t feel like telling or explaining or being insightful.  Mostly, my brain felt confused and unsettled at what had happened in Africa, how it had changed me as a person, how I was different now than I was before I came, where my life was taking me knowing what I now know and seeing what I had seen.   I guess I didn’t really process my experiences the way that I needed to.

I realized pretty recently that I had a choice to make.  I could take what I had felt and experienced and tasted and breathed in Cape Town and call it all a neat portion of my life.  A cool adventure that I escaped from unscathed, and keep a few photos to show the grandkids.  I could tell them about how I used to live in Africa and how I rode an elephant or had to lock the car doors so baboons wouldn’t get in.  The kids would love that stuff.  And there would be nothing wrong with allowing that to be the extent of my African journey.  But I wouldn’t have been true to myself if that is all the influence I allowed Africa to have over me.

So then, there was the second option.  I go back.  All Marcus Garvey style, back to the Motherland, 3 different flights, 14 hours of layovers, and a 3 day solo journey.  Sort of my own personal Mecca: I go back to Cape Town and try and gain a better understanding of what I am doing in this life.  Why I feel such a pull here and what I am supposed to learn, do, grow from. 

Those who know me a little or know me a lot would realize I chose the latter of these two options.  I am returning to Cape Town for a few weeks.  To do some soul wandering, and then some soul searching, and maybe, ultimately, some soul understanding.  If I come out of here more confused than ever, than well, that’s ok.  Because I would rather know I tried to understand than dismissing what seemed silly at the time.  I guess we will all always live with what ifs in our lives, but I don’t want this to be one of those what ifs.

My rash decision making has undoubtedly given my loved ones back home a headache over this whole thing.  No one wants someone they care about 9000 miles away.  And if I could incorporate an apology for the stress and a thank you for the understanding into one phrase it would be a “thankology” and I would seal it on the heart of everyone who loves me.

I will be home soon, and I will be home stronger.  But when Mama Africa calls, you answer.

Soak it In

This weird thing happens when you grow up: you start getting lots of different groups of people in your life and a lot of times, these groups never really overlap.  I guess this is good sometimes: if you don’t think your work friends would get along with your high school friends, or your childhood friends are too childhood for your college friends or something like this.  But sometimes, I still imagine how incredibly awesome it would be for all of my friends: from summer camp, to middle school to the friend of friend’s friend could all get together in one beautiful moment, and all the people you care about were in one area, and you wouldn’t have to miss anyone because everyone you cared about would be right there. 

It’s a fun thing to daydream about, I suppose, despite being completely irrational.  But as my mom, dad and sisters all made the long journey to Cape Town in order to visit the daughter on the other side of the world, there were a few less people that my heart was missing, and I was incredibly happy.

It was just really beautiful, I guess.  My real life American family comes and gets to meet my African family.  And everyone is a different color, and not everyone knows all of the same languages, and so many of us are from different places, but you can feel the love. 

And there was something so awesome about seeing my baby sister’s laughing and cooking with my new African brothers.  Or seeing my dad laugh and joke with my new found soul sisters.  You get all the people you love and you put them in one place and you worry that the world might implode with greatness.  But it doesn’t.  It’s really just calms down and maybe spins a little slower and lets you soak it all in. 

For Realz...

I think the pictures from Mozambique look pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.  It looks like some super tropical hyper colorful African island warm ocean blue ski coconut filled adventure.  And yeah, I suppose it was that.  But the pictures (intentionally, for the sake of my dear parent’s hearts) left out some of the reality of the trip.  Well, now my wonderful parents and my beautiful sisters have managed to find their way to Cape Town, and I have been able to assure them, with reasonable certainty, that I am safe and healthy (although often lacking in food).  And therefore, because my family and I are now on similar continents, I am able to tell the REAL story of what happened in Mozambique:

It all began on a rainy day (like most real stories about Mozambique do) in Johannesburg, South Africa, waiting for the plane to take off and fly us in to Inhambane, Mozambique.  This is easier said than done in Africa, as someone had stolen the nose off of our plane (naturally).  Now, I don’t speak from experience, but I feel like nose’s of planes would be heavy, heavier than a refrigerator even, so I am not sure how this thief was able to successfully take airplane parts, but he/she managed, causing the flight to be delayed a good four hours.  While in most cases, a flight delay is nothing more than a hassle, for Gaby and me, it is more of a safety issue.  We had specifically planned on not having to walk around a strange city when it was dark, but a few hours into the party on the runway, we realized the sun would have long been set by the time we would arrive.

But we are fearless, and we are warriors, and we stood in that line to receive a visa with a confidence that told us that as soon as we got out of this airport, we would find a cab that would take us straight to the hostel and no damages would have been done.  But nearing the visa counter, we realized the confidence may have been premature.  A good friend of ours (and also a travel agent) had said the last time she had been in Mozambique, the visa’s had cost around R90.  (That’s about 11 dollars for the faithful American crowd.)  However, this price had been changed, slightly, since she had been there, and we were looking at a R700 visa for a quick stay in Inhambane.  Well, that is not usually the kind of cash folks like us carry around the Johannesburg airport, so when we got up to the counter, we asked the attendant, as calmly as possible, if he took credit cards? 

He smiled, because we were so cute to ask that, and assured us that he didn’t take credit cards, but he would take our passports.  So he did.  Those precious blue books that anyone who has ever travelled will assure you that it is the one thing you don’t want to lose/leave behind/ get stolen/ leave with some guy at the two room airport in Mozambique when its night time.  And I’m sure he is usually a friendly guy, but things just sound friendlier when someone hasn’t taken your identification from you and tells you to “Come back when you have money.”

Gaby and I were fairly stressed at this point and considered our options.  We could go out on the streets of the city and try to find and ATM, but that wasn’t sounding too hot in the dark and rain of a new African city.  We could sell Gaby’s iPod to someone in the airport and then use that money to get our passports back.  We could trade Gaby’s iPod for our passports with the guy behind the counter. (I am not sure why my iPod got left out of this.)  Or… we could check everything we have and maybe will come up with the money.  And after thoroughly checking the pocket of every bag and jacket that we had with us… we had R1420.  That was just over the R1400 we needed for two visas.  God is good.

We got our visas, and we received our passports, and airports like this are too small to have a baggage claim, but they do have a hall where they will set your bag after you have landed.  Still a little bit giddy from not having to be the next episode of “Locked up Abroad” we skipped to the baggage claim and the man their kindly told us that that the airlines had left our bags in Johannesburg, maybe.  Mostly he was trying to reassure that the bags probably hadn’t disappeared completely, and that maybe they were in South Africa?  And that if they somehow ended up in Mozambique at any point, he would take them to where we were staying.  So I gave him my South African phone number, fully aware it wouldn’t work in this country, but at a loss at what else to do.  Anyways, we had bigger problems, like how to get to Tofo, the place where the hostel was 20km away with just R20 (about 3 dollars). 

Things were tense, let’s be real, but me and Gaby put on our game faces and sweet talked a cab driver into driving around to find ATMs before we headed to Tofo with our newly found cash.  The long awaited ATM stop was fruitless.  The bank was closed and the outdoor ATM only accepted Mozambique cards.   We were officially in the middle of rural African country where we didn’t speak the language, with no phones, no luggage, no food, no money, and no real idea of what to do.  In the words of one of our dear African friends, this was Michael Jackson super-bad. 

Most of the time, when things go wrong, people have a plan B in mind.  For example, if for some reason the prospect of graduating college falls through, then I could always fall back on my new found Contemporary African Dance skills to find a job.  Or if class runs late and I can’t make it to the Mowbray Shoprite before it closes, then I could eat toast for dinner.  Again.  However, as me and Gaby stood on that street corner and tried to think of what plan B could be, nothing really came to mind.  We needed money to get to a hostel.  We needed money to stay at a hostel.  We mostly wanted our moms.

Coming back to the cab driver, with no money and less hope, we explained the situation.  And bless his heart, the cab driver laughed.  And we drove around.  And around.  Until we found an ATM that would accept our South African cards.  And while Gaby’s card still refused to give us any cash, the ATM managed to spit out a little money (an extremely minimal amount due to South African banking security policy) and we were officially able to pay the cab driver to take us to the hostel in Tofo and pay him for driving us about as we tested every ATM in Inhambane.

That night, I lay in my mosquito net bed and thought several things.  First of all, I thought about Christmas.  This could have been due to the fact that Gaby insisted that our mood would be greatly improved if we listened to The Polar Express soundtrack before bed.  Second of all, I contemplated, for an extremely long time, why on earth I was so incredibly happy at that moment in time.  I was impossibly hungry, the kind that can wake you up when your stomach growls.  I was wearing the same yoga pants and t shirt I put on at 4:30 am the morning prior.  I had no money, no plan, and no way to tell if the noise outside was a warthog or baboon.  But I was so impossibly joyful. And only now can did I figure out why.

  Because this was an adventure.  Because I was exploring and I knew that my heart was free and that I was stretching my wings like they needed to be stretched.  Because I was letting a restless soul run it all out. And because… well, this is how I knew I was growing.

Gaby and I, we had more gypsy journeys.  We found ourselves hitchhiking around town and living solely on mangos and coconuts.  Our bags eventually showed up in Inhambane and money was ultimately obtained.  But at this point, it only barely touched our hearts. What filled us was the realization that we made friends while we had nothing to offer but our hearts, and the fact that we laughed just as hard when we were hungry.

I suppose this just confirmed what I had always suspected.  People make me happy and experiences have me smile.  But the clothes, the money, even the food, it’s not my joy: it’s my comfort.  And sometimes you can feel that joy just a little deeper right there in the middle of uncomfortable. 

Mozambique Memories...

Me and my lovely roommate Gaby decided that we wanted to take on Mozambique, just the two of  us.  Here are a few snapshots from the adventures of last week...

Better than Prom

There is something that I call “The Prom Effect” that will
hit you hard if you aren’t aware of it.
It happens where you get super excited for one big event, decide that it
is going to be the best day of your life, and then it turns out to be a little
(or a lot, depending on the size of your imagination) less than you
expected. Just like prom. At the time, you are certain it’s going to be
the best day of your life, but looking back, the best part was eating pie at
Village Inn after the dance.
And usually that’s what happens. It’s the seemingly insignificant things that
you remember: the stuff that we don’t plan or organize always seems to be times
where we were happiest or living the most.
I don’t know why that is, exactly, maybe because we get so preoccupied
thinking that we should be having fun
we forget to actually do it. I don’t know.
What I do know is that while I have had an incredible time
on my various adventures, it wasn’t bungee jumping, or riding an elephant, or
petting a cheetah that I am going to think about when my mind goes to
Africa. What I am going to think of is
all those beautifully random moments I experienced while finding a home worlds
away from what I know.
I’m going to think of superhero dinners, late night forts,
unscheduled mud fights, and fuzzy critters found on my bedroom floor. But most of all I am going to remember the
people that made these things happen.
Some friends on this journey were finding Africa just as new as me, and
for other friends, Africa has always been home.
I think if you asked any of them today, though, every last one would say
that at least one piece of their heart belongs to Cape Town: how big of piece
is up for them to decide.
I posted some pictures: maybe not as impressive as Victoria
Falls or the jungles of Botswana, but arguably just as beautiful. These pictures show the memories I will miss
most. Because Africa is nothing like prom.