Africa

So you’ve gotten off the plane… a plane you probably stepped onto reluctantly.

You’ve probably thought, ‘it will be nice to have a long hot shower and sleep in a bed’. But in all honestly, that probably doesn’t override the desire you have to stay just that ‘little bit longer’.

Coming home from your first trip to the African Continent is hard…undoubtedly in different forms depending on where you spent your time. You’ve had the African Experience (as long as you didn’t confine yourself to the four walls of a western hotel chain). And that experience never quite leaves you the same. As Francesca Marciano wrote, “When you leave Africa, as the plane lifts, you feel that more than leaving a continent, you’re leaving a state of mind. Whatever awaits you at the other end of your journey will be a different order of existence.”

You will most likely have seen animals in their own habitats – ones you had only seen in zoos from a distance behind a cage or in African Travel brochures. You will have seen landscapes of such vast expanses that your brain can’t even comprehend what is before your eyes; mountains, deserts, coastlines, oceans’ meeting, peaks, valleys and stretches of green as far as the eye can see. You will have felt the wildness of the wilderness in a way you have never experienced before – an exhilarating and terrifying exploration of the feeling that you are at the mercy of Mother Nature – in a direct conversation with Her in a way that has been desensitised or silenced in the Western World.

You’ll have become accustomed to unsealed roads and Pap for dinner, you’ll know never to ask what the weather will be like any further out than that afternoon. You’ll have sore arms from waving at all the local faces and you will be used to hearing multiple different languages in the same conversation. You will be used to the site of yourself a frizzy, sweaty mess, always a little grubby under the fingernails and with a camera firmly attached to your being. And then…. You’re home.

To civilisation.

Steralisation.

You will notice the paved roads and routines; the perfumed smells and the ease of living. You will know the familiarity of your home but somehow, it will feel different.

Or rather, you will feel different in it. Because…you are different. It can’t be helped. Africa changes you. She can’t help but add Her twist to you…so expected but still so surprising it is to come home and feel like you’ve taken a bit of Africa with you. Or maybe like you left a little bit of yourself there. Or just that you came home cracked so wide open that you’re not sure where you and Africa and your African experience part ways.

On my very first night in Africa, sitting in a blackout under a storm like I’d never experienced, a local man asked me why I’d come to Africa. He said it was important to Africans to know why people travelled so far. I told him that I’d always wanted to set foot on African soil, to see it for myself, to feel the difference – that I had long felt there was something in Africa for me to find or see or learn. And with complete comprehension, he leant back in his chair, placed his folded hands on his big belly and with a sigh that sounded of nostalgia and understanding, he looked at me and simply said, “Africa – she definitely speaks directly to the heart.”

And now you’re home. After your heart has been in this raw, open, exposing, turbulent, unmatchable and indescribable conversation with the powerful woman that is Africa Herself. And somehow that conversation doesn’t feel finished. And you’re trying to find the pulse or the voice of the city you’re now in. The city that you call home. And you can’t quite put your finger on where it’s gone. Everything feels too safe.

Too rehearsed.

Too excessive.

Too comfortable.

And you feel too raw.

Too wild.

But that has to be the beauty of travelling to a place like Africa. You didn’t stand a chance of coming back the person you left as.

So what’s the good news?

How does one find their feet in a concrete jungle?

Firstly, don’t panic if you momentarily fall out of love with your home. But also don’t try and squeeze your ‘Africa-Self’ into city life or put Africa away.

Sit in the sun. Put your feet in the grass. Stargaze at night – they are the same stars you were in awe of in the beauty of Swaziland or the mountains of Lesotho. Run your fingers through the sand. The grains are a product of the same ocean you sat in front of with people who had become fast friends in Durban.

Talk to people about Her. Inform those who want to know. Teach them about the Africa you saw with your own eyes, not the Africa that people have been informed by pop-culture about.

And most importantly, be patient with yourself. Take your time. Feel your way into your new self in this old place. And trust that you will return to one day. “One cannot resist the lure of Africa” (Rudyard Kipling).

Until then, T.I.A.