Rules of Engagement

I travel because people are interesting, and when you travel you get to meet all sorts of interesting people with different views of the world.

There was one night when I agreed to go to Zula in Town for a show, and whilst there a guy asked me why I kept up with 'the Jesus look', and at first I said I didn't know (it's a fairly common question). But then when he went to empty his beer-filled bladder, I thought about it in my half-cut stupor and realized that I did know why I did it: because I always feel weird going up to engage with randoms, but this look seems to pique plenty of curiosities and allows me to meet plenty of people. And it seems in some cases I don't just meet them, but they seem to somehow trust me implicitly and admit striking things to me about themselves.

"We all have secret lives/In our secret rooms/Living in our movies/Humming our own tunes" -- Bruce Dickinson

At one venue in Zimbabwe, I was at a pub where they were having a 'ladies night' with musical chairs and other things for prizes. After the spectacle ended and I was hanging around without a partner, the emcee of the session, who seemed strong and independent, came up and started chatting with me. She then took me aside to the patio where we could talk without shouting and asked many questions about my lifestyle of travel, why I did it, etc. She seemed very interested in me, and after the pub closed, we walked back to the hostel I was staying at to continue the conversation. At the gate the security guy asked which room I was staying and when I replied that I was staying in a dorm, he said that I couldn't bring a woman in with me, and I replied that that was not my intention. So despite it being quite late and very chilly, we sat by the fire and talked more about various things. And then she started to speak about herself, revealing to me that her father left when she was very young and her stepfather was happy to pay to put her through some of the best schools in the area, but was also molesting her. And all of a sudden this confident-looking woman (of 29) broke down and started telling me that although she had her job emceeing and such, that she felt 'totally useless' and that she felt her life was 'basically pointless' and she needed to find closure somehow, and really had nowhere to go.

In another instance, I was helping an individual prepare for exams, and it came out that she had been in a relationship with a very, VERY famous South African. I had barely known her a few days, and I probably would be unlikely to see her again after that, but as she dropped me back at my place, she told me all about how she felt during the relationship, living in his shadow, often being in a long-distance relationship, etc., but eventually having to break it off, and crying for a week because of it. Throughout the conversation I gave my input and at the end of it all she told me that she doesn't normally like to talk about it, but for some reason talking through the details with me made her feel better.

There are a fair few such stories of this type that have been revealed to me either by people making my acquaintance and telling me about themselves, or physically showing me and including me in various things that reflect the way they live: sleeping on floors of ghettos, 'showering' from a basin because there is no running water (luckily by the time I got to Mafeteng, I had plenty of experience of this in Chamanculo), and other things that most Canadians would have a difficult time even fathoming.

One thing that struck me as incredibly profound, however, was when my friend and I decided to spend an afternoon in the township of Langa. As black townships go, it is probably one of the safest in Cape Town. We had originally hoped to go to Khayelitsha for a day, but the weather was against us so we had to put it off. What was profound was not what we saw in Langa, but after, when he turned to me and said "we go to these places and lambaste the locals for being afraid and carrying stereotypes about how dangerous they are, but what about us? What about 'local tourism'? Would you hang out on a Native reservation when you get back to Canada?" My first thought was "fuck, no! That's way too dangerous, and what would be the point?" But then I realized the reality of the situation and it shows how much Ive learned from Africa, especially the manner in which the existential doors have been thrown wide open in terms of what I can and cannot do or should and should not do, and I realized that the correct answer was

"I can't wait. It's gonna be so amazing, and so absurd!"