Post-Africa Realizations

He’s one of many – those people so inclined to forward moving that they forget where they came from. Forget what they are. Technicality replaces complexity; internet replaces conversation; computer screens replace mirrors; emails replace letters; information replaces exploration. Everything in the world at the fingertips of anyone in a single room.

I had forgotten about it. Partially because I too have inevitably succumbed to the World Wide Web, my cell phone and my iPod. But while away I had forgotten why I couldn’t forgive America for being what it is: the Magic Land of Everything. Wal-Marts and Starbuckses; televisions and computers in every home, cell phones in every hand. Survival without these things is just a little bit of an unwanted hassle. I craved them for the four months I didn’t have them. But there was that part of me that noticed the quiet in my head and the flurry in my heart. Something long since dormant had awakened in me as if American excess had put it to sleep – the survival instinct of my soul surrogated by a placebo. My hand held a pen rather than my phone. My eyes watched the world instead of my TV or computer screen. There wasn’t access to the latter like there’s access to it here. We were forced to go without, and to my surprise, I found that other, more necessary, more vital, better things filled the void. And I did – I had that simple, joyful feeling of complacency. A constant feeling of pieces in their place. Unbeknownst by me, the reason was because I had human company – whether it was myself or someone else. There is just nothing like it. No one, nothing more important.

As they all sat round the table, the Whole Wide World in their hands, they mistook my scowl for envy while I watched them. It wasn’t envy; it was contempt. It was homesickness for the place that isn’t even my home. It was my heart breaking, watching them, realizing I didn’t fit at that table, my Whole Wide World in my hands. Realizing that I wouldn’t ever be like them again – if ever I had been. It was understanding the estrangement I would have to deal with in all my relationships with the people here. I didn’t feel like I had changed while away in Africa. I didn’t even feel it when I stepped off the plane into my home country. I rejoiced at the sound of American accents – at the very sight of fat people! At face value, it was familiarity. The thing I’d wanted.

I realized, suddenly, what happened to me as soon as I saw them standing there. All of them. Smiling. Jumping up and down. Giddy. Welcome-Home signs in their hands. I’m still recovering from the shocking disappointment. Who could I blame but that temptress, Africa with her dirty smooth skin, bright colors and raw human stench? It wasn’t anyone’s fault – not theirs, not mine. Disappointment was inevitable, just unexpected. It was no individual that I was disappointed with. I loved all those smiling, giddy faces. I loved them most in that moment – trading hugs with each of them. We were Back Together Again. But in that very second that I saw them in Tulsa’s airport, I made a firm vow that our reunion would not be a Happily Ever After affair.

They didn’t ask for my stories as they all wrote they wanted to hear. They didn’t ask to go through the pictures so I could point out who was who and what was what. No one wanted to know much beyond “How was it?” So I didn’t tell anyone anything more than “It was the best thing I’ve ever done.” That was enough for each who asked; they asked nothing more than that.

God, I missed – instantly – café conversations with strong coffee in the morning. Long and enduring conversations that seemed to want no end – from either side. Riaan who loved to hear and loved to listen. He wanted to know what I thought – about everything, about anything. He asked. And he looked into my eyes with the eagerness of a schoolboy dying to learn.

Here, conversations are pallid. They gnaw at the edges of any meaty substance but never take a full, hearty bite. No one cares. Or no one dares. These are the dreary results of a society with the Whole Wide World in their hands or in their rooms. The answers? They’re there in someone else’s words, discovered by someone else’s experience. This, they say, is globalization – the transnationalization of information. It’s the assumption that we’re all the same. The very same. My search button is now my airplane. My YouTube account is now my first-hand witness. And since it’s there whenever we want, nobody cares. Nobody dares.

Just another thing taken for granted. The world. And all the people in it.