South Africa’s oldest Presbyterian church lies silently with its brother in the hills an hour and a half from Grahamstown. They have been sitting in quiet contemplation for a very, very long time; and will likely contemplate a long time still.
Bodhisatta (n): In the Pali canon, the Bodhissata Siddhartha Gotama is described thus:
Before my awakening, when I was an unawakened Bodhisatta, being subject myself to birth, sought what was likewise subject to birth. Being subject myself to aging… illness… death… sorrow… defilement, I sought happiness in what was likewise subject to illness… death… sorrow… defilement.
The night draws close and the world sleeps. Quietly, in my own silent space here, the walls remind me of journeys past. Places, so many places. Framed, worn as a purple Ethiopian scarf, a magic ring from Senegal around my neck and another on my thumb – haggled from a trader in Aswan. Reminders of the distances we can cover. Of how much can start with a thought.
There is much that I have come to remember that I missed about university. Like learning – that feeling as though you are actually becoming smarter with each article read. Or that feeling of checking books out of the library as though you were becoming wiser for the exercise. Like the conversations that draw late into the night on the strings of ideas of the world as it could be. I’ve also come to remember exams – that periodic test of otherwise unshakable self-belief.
Fingers press the stories insistently into the keyboard. Sometimes gently, or sarcastically, or desperately weaving something that happened into a wordpicture that my smile – or yours – will find in some time hence. Sometimes finding a story is hard. Sometimes finding it is easy, but recalling it is harder. Memory fades and few stories remain untarnished under time’s gentle and persistent breath. Other times they are as close as the ring that brushes the space bar. A gentle discomfort whose value keeps it close.
I don’t so much wake up as have the sleep evaporated from me. Morning in the Sudan drifts warm into the room. My bed sags forlornly, too worn to squeal in protest as I climb out of my sleeping bag; packing it and my toiletries into my backpack in minutes. I’m getting good at moving. I’ve been moving for almost two months now. It’s easier to be efficient today, since today is a moving day. Yesterday was not. It was an exploring day. For fifty mornings, those are the only days I have known. Moving days and exploring days. Traveling fast and light is efficient, but can keep you a permanent stranger – someone around long enough to see, but never to understand.
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Living in the Eastern Cape is living in a graveyard. The bleached bones of stories pierce the landscape in silence, clung to by the sinewy dust roads poking off the tar where life still moves. They relinquish their stories only to those who go looking. Quietly asking passers by to take a detour, explore. There is a treasure down every vein of tarless dirt.
I love the questions that readers of this blog occasionally ask about travel, life and the big choices we make as we negotiate our paths through it. Not because I have any answers in the maths-exam sense of the word, but because it’s an opportunity to stop, look back and regain some perspective. A reader sent me an email the other day which echoes some themes that have been bouncing around unusually often in conversation with some fellow journalists-to-be and with my online travel friends, so to make the universe happy, I have published the replies here in the hope that it might be useful to others. There may be no answers, but ideas might be the next best thing.
Nostalgia makes a fine mistress in the evenings. I’ve realised recently that finding interesting bits and pieces on travel blogs about Sudan is actually quite difficult. Searching for Sudan away from the South and Darfur, there is actually not a whole lot out there. So, in the interests of adding to the Internet, here is a short video from my Christmas home in December – the town of Atbara in Sudan.
The wind tumbles uncoordinatedly down the side roads. It’s the fastest thing in the quiet streets – not quite refreshing, but blowing hard enough to lift the heat from my skin, to make me believe that it’s not really as hot as it is. Dust crunches softly underfoot, leaping up in angry puffs as Yusuf, Katherine and I approach the community hall.
