Something About Studying In Africa

I wonder if the same people who claim the absolute beauty of the universe when they see the wrinkles in an old African—or wherever she’s from—woman’s face are the same ones who touch their own faces in fear of their own wrinkles when they see an old man with a cane walk down the street. I wonder if when they hear a man say that the people who live in the tiny shacks in townships, the ones who are facing a garbage strike that means garbage littering their makeshift streets, floating down like the dusty roads are filled with water and the garbage is just part of the flood, feel just as skeptical of the idea that these people living underneath and surrounded only by tin and the heat of the other six bodies around them, are able to keep their children’s school uniforms clean and keep their children smelling clean and reliable.

I suppose it’s a natural reaction to feel either ecstatic by the photos taken with little black children at one’s feet (or on one’s shoulder, as the case may be) and post it to the hordes of people who haven’t experienced it first hand, or uneasy at the competitive nature of the peers being approached by the children. A picture is certainly worth a thousand words, and I often can’t help but feel jealousy at the absolute gems that some of my friends have gotten with the friendly little children who are just as awestruck by our foreignness as we are at theirs. But I also can’t fully subscribe to the cynicism of the people who write articles with provocative descriptions of how inhumane it is to live with such a naïve view of humanity. the creators of the white savior barbie in Africa types.

The reason that I haven’t gotten a tattoo here yet is fairly simple: I don’t want to have to take two weeks off of surfing. And perhaps there is some underlying part of me that, because I don’t know what to get, doesn’t want to make a permanent decision on a whim. Although I think that’s a faulty explanation because I did just that only a few months ago.

perhaps it is because this place feels so far from a final destination for me. I love it here for sure, and am certainly going to want to come back, but more than anything, I feel like this place can only really be labeled as a jumping off point. it can only be the place that marked a transition in the way that I do things. in the way that I think about my future.