In and Out of South Africa

Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope over 500 years ago, circumventing Arab traders and successful finding a sea route from Europe to the East Indies. This cemented the legacy of Portuguese naval might, and proved at the time, that Africa did indeed have an endpoint. It was named "Good Hope" later, replacing "Cape of Storms," almost suggesting "good luck" given the number of shipwrecks that occurred in those unpredictable waters where ocean and currents smash together. It is one of the real landmarks of human existence, still serving as a halfway point between journeys for boats long at sea, and still carrying some romantic obsession in modern times. The obsolete lighthouse looks out from the bottom of the world, flashing its light in the fog and the rain, all the way down to Antarctica.

And so the tip of South Africa blossomed before me, some 500 years later, like a bright beacon of civilization in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Out beyond the colonial blocks of Cape Town, it felt as though the many worries of my life twisted and turned around Chapman's Peak Drive, before spinning off into nothingness or falling down the cliffs right into the sea. Past the Portuguese padraos all the way to the Cape, I hiked the last remaining cliff to the end of it all, where every nationality converged for seemingly the same picture. Then I meandered my way back down the peninsula to Boulders Bay, Simon's Town, and Fish Hoek, all lovely little formerly Dutch and British communities with one foot in the past and one in the present. The panoramic views sprout again over each hilltop. At one lookout I overhead someone say, "eventually you just stop taking pictures because the beautiful views don't go away."

Thoughts of Nigeria are everywhere these days, that corrupted, intense, mess of a place always dancing on the brink. Two greater paradoxes do not exist on one continent: the majestic view of Table Mountain reaching into the sky and dubbed a new wonder of the world, and then as an afterthought that one time I saw a woman with spread legs and a hiked up skirt peeing aside the public highway in Lagos, sheep scurrying about in the urban background. I was told from the beginning you have to get out of Nigeria to remember the world is not like Nigeria. You have to get out so it does not break you. Thus the Rainbow Nation of South Africa was as necessary as it was desired for a few bright days in September.

I got excessively drunk with strangers in old wine country around Stellenbosch one afternoon, stumbling along in and out of a five-farm tour. Wine terminology, the procedures, the protocol, and the elevated status of reds and whites and pinks, it still tends to be over my head, but I can appreciate a good drink with the best of them. I can mimic behaviors, nod when asked for thoughts, pretending to know what I'm doing, and hours later and by days end, none of it matters anymore. Nine of us who began the day with a reserved greeting passed a bottle of white around the back of a van laughing at the end, and Ebola and pollution and traffic and corruption and poverty and dirt and inefficiency and the entire terrible world of Nigeria seemed very far away and like it would never come back to me again. "Wine brings people together," our tour guide said at the beginning, and reminded us of again at the end.

In one great culmination, I almost burst into tears at breakfast on my last day when a waitress brought me an omelette and big latte and I realized how fresh and good and affordable it all was, and even more, how much the deep crevices of my body had missed and nearly forgotten exactly what real food was. It is amazing when you wake up and realize the simple things one country can make you appreciate. And likewise, there is no feeling more terrible than boarding an airplane that leaves the best place on Earth for another stint in the worst. My black South African waitress laughed when I said I live in Nigeria, telling me she was not aware white people chose to live there, and I do follow her logic at times. However I remain firm in my belief that there too remains great value in the dark parts of the world, and returning to the dark parts of the world again. Even if there isn't, it's sure too late to go back now, so we might as well make the most of it until the end of it all comes, I pack my bags, and run off somewhere else.