I look out the airplane window British leads me to Spain, after a stopover at Johannesburg. I am slowly losing the image of Table Mountain to be impossible to retain its shape. Symbolic image. Cape Town is over, just for now Africa. That expedited the end.
I sat back and start thinking all these months lived in, undoubtedly the most exciting year and a half of my life. Serve this post as push to all who will make the decision to get lost in the world in places that seem inaccessible. They are not. I'm an explorer, I do not climb mountains to survive in desert, I speak six languages or, and my hands are stainless, and ... I'm a regular guy, and sometimes lost on maps, one day decided to move to South Africa, as might have been somewhere else, to work as a journalist and travel. The key, I remember sitting there, that I was not seeking nor expecting anything. It's just a "tip": huyan ni den tone, nor expect anything ... then find something.
Africa was to discover what time useless. I think that's what I have marked this place. Do not wear a watch for the first time in many years, no sense. It's stupid, a detail in another way to summarize life wander. What sense does a watch in a place where the public bus drivers stop to make the purchase without anyone protesting or where the ferries are elastic and do not leave until they are so loaded that do not lift a foot of water? What sense does a watch on a channel of the Zambezi River, expect when two lions come to drink most of your hand? (There is no time in the waiting, there just waiting to behold).
Africa was undoubtedly his nature. To make you feel always overwhelms a stranger. Shown at will, walk-, that there's his secret. A museum with life where you never know where to look. Africa was its skies after hours. At dawn the sun rises slowly and paints the background of reddish; at sunset plummets, fast, vomiting all palette; night is easier, is painted only in white with some black specks.
Africa, in the end, was chaos, noise, undirected movement, compass without magnets, cinnamon beaches, bonfires scattered in the suburbs, the waning moon, the moans in the darkness of the animals, obscene poverty
Africa was its people. I took so many smiles and laughter free as you navigate around sometimes request payment without custom faces. What I took of Africans is their innocence in the attempt, children always cheerful, his women always working.
Africa, in the end, was chaos, noise, undirected movement, compass without magnets, cinnamon beaches, bonfires scattered in the suburbs, the waning moon, the moans in the darkness of the animals, obscene poverty, insulting wealth, unapologetic corruption, Hawthorn Gardens, the old songs of black soul, improvised dances on asphalt, untimely laughter, unnamed friends, violent rivers, deserts deserts too, markets rubble, books without covers, the Red, ceremonies of the absurd, Hotels in watercolor, wines without cork, beds without sheets, happy faces, candlelit dinners, her blond hair and green eyes, Dreams come true. Africa was and will be the place you always return.
PD. I think 2012 I will.
