A tree frog, a seldom heard visitor, began to trill and suddenly, I felt as though I were back in South Africa, surrounded by a symphony of night sounds and a breathtaking vista teeming with life.
I think about Africa in the in-between-times of my travels. Its been three months since I was there and it will be three months since I return. I have a bevy of friends who are also similarly obsessed with the place and our conversations are often of those things we have seen, those places we have visited and our keen desire to be back there again and again to see more, to see everything.
Its a curious thing, this split awareness. I am totally enamored with Virginia and in the nearly twenty years since I have called her home, I have always appreciated her gentle beauty and I have gazed with wonder at her ancient forests, fertile valleys and blue, blue mountains. I can think of no other place I would rather call my home.
And yet. There she is. Africa. Sitting silently on the other side of the world. I think of her as a very old, very wise and wrinkled woman, waiting at the door quietly with immense and profound patience, listening for the sounds of one of her wayward children to return for a long overdue visit. Knowing the child will stop by only very briefly and always far too infrequently. But she isn't sad. She holds the secrets of a multitude of millennia in her eyes and possesses a warm, soulful embrace that no child can ever fully resist.
Africa stirs the fancy in many of her visitors, I'm sure. Its a place so alien and yet so utterly familiar to us all. This was the place from which we came, after all, no matter where home is for us now.
Who can be unmoved to see a pride of lion roaming in tall grass or lazing along a ridge-line or roadside? Eyeing the occasional visitor with a superior air of disdain, these stunningly elegant beasts languish in the heat of the day, posturing, preening and posing for the cameras, confident in their endless ability to amaze and bewitch.
Their cousin, the crafty leopard, remains out of sight to me, but I persist in my pursuit. I feel that he will have something of importance to tell me one day and that I must be patient and earn the privilege to hear what he might say - an unworthy pupil yearning for the master's message. He travels in solitude, always, and remains just one step ahead of me. I have not yet been granted his audience.
Africa has been the subject of poem and prose for countless generation. Millions upon millions of words have been dedicated to her and few, if any, of them do her justice, including these on this page. She is an essence, a taste, a touch...a scent upon the wind that triggers a primordial memory... and a tribute to her always falls just short of truly describing her.
And so I return, again and again, to reconnect with myself, with my planet, with the animals that are my brethren. To gaze upon a moon which is my moon, and yet, not quite. To see the flip-side of the galaxy, to hear a language that is not my own and to experience all that is offered to me, with gratitude and grace.
