From "When A Man Loves A Woman" Chapter 12.
In Tarifa, we could finally see the hills of the African coast, on the other side of the Gibraltar Strait. Alia and I really struggled realizing we were finally there; the moment had finally arrived. Our first day in Africa was a total blast. We were really euphoric. We could not believe, two years after we had first talked about it, coming back from Daniel's cabin, we were finally in Africa!
We absolutely loved Tangier. I think it would be fair to say, eventually, it became my favorite town in Morocco, because of its authenticity. We were so excited that, for what I believe was the first and last time in all our travels, we accepted to follow a professional guide. Larby took as all over town. Although, I think, what Alia enjoyed the most was the opportunity to indulge ourselves in the most awesome mid-day dinner, right in the middle of Ramadan.
At the end of the day, Alia was ready to move on, find some place to camp in the desert, and continue the next morning towards Tetuan. I, however, thought we could really make good use of a break and some time to relax and rest with friends. Ben Ballard, an American exchange student in Tangier, had accepted to host us a couple of days ago, and was still waiting to hear from us. I was able to convince Alia we would be best spending the night with Ben and his African friends. It was really a good decision. Ben was a really nice and friendly guy. He had been living in Morocco for a while already, so he was able to give us some insight on the current Moroccan society. He lived in a big house, with several other friends; not all of them from Morocco, but there were a few from some other African countries. We were therefore able to get a taste of what was coming.
If Morocco was first, Mauritania followed, and afterwards Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Namibia and South Africa.
Without a doubt, our journey across Africa is one of the most amazing and intense experiences Alia and I will ever live in our whole lives. I would not like to say my bicycle tour around the American West or our journeys across Central America and all over Europe were anything less; but, undoubtedly, Africa is special. Africa, particularly 'Black Africa', is like a totally different planet. In most African countries, very, very few homes enjoy regular power. If at all, all what they can afford ins to run some generator for a couple of hours a day. That alone has an enormous impact on people's lives. For example, very few homes own a fridge; even less a freezer. Life is run by daylight: the day starts very early (shortly before sunrise) and ends very early as well (shortly after dark). On the other hand, people is in far closer contact with nature. Human touch and relationships also play a much stronger and important role. Life goes on a much slower pace and people spend far more time chatting and laughing together. Less TV and access to mainstream media make people more free as well. Right or wrong (and, as in any other generalization there are always many outliers), I ended up concluding, for whatever the reason, black people, or at least black Africans, have a better ability to find happiness in simpler things in life. Somehow white people we constantly seem to be able to find some excuse to be dissatisfied and unhappy with what we have, no matter what. Still, racial tensions in Africa are enormous: black Africans generally believe whites are foreigners, who come to steal their natural resources and exploit them. On the other hand, as much as they do not like to admit it openly, white people in Africa often think blacks are stupid and do not know how to do things on their own. Once you dig enough that they are ready to admit their racist views, they will support their point explaining that, even in Africa, where whites are a minority, they are all, regardless of their social-economic origin, clearly much better well off than blacks. As a brain researcher, I certainly find the question interesting; but think the right answer lies more in their character. It seems to me, white people we are more ambitious or more unquenchable (sometimes even voracious...); whereas African blacks, for whatever the reason, seem to find it easier to be happy and settle down with what they got. After all, very often we do not get farther in life because we are brighter, but because we have a bigger motivation. It is the same tedious and really boring old story of intelligence. Why do they keep calling it intelligence when they are only thinking about control? As a brain researcher I really feel the need to say that the whole concept that a human being may be "more intelligent" than another (even more so that a group of people may be "more intelligent" than another, just because of their ethnicity, nationality, gender, etc.) is basically stupid and is always only aimed to justify the control, abuse and opression of some human beings over others. There is simply no scientific base to establish that one person is "more intelligent" than another; to begin with, because there is no universally-accepted, clear definition of 'intelligence'.
We have always been told that white Christian Europeans came to conquer and enslaved the indigenous populations of the Americas and Africa, because we were smarter and civilized. However, our actions only speak for our viciousness. In fact, our intelligence cannot get much credit for European military superiority during the Age of Discovery, since the key to our overwhelming power lied on gunpowder and cannons, which were actually brought by the Mongols from China. In other words, if white Christian Europeans came to conquer and dominate Africa and the Americas, it was not because we were smarter; but because we, or more precisely our rulers and leaders, were more vicious and ruthless.
Furthermore, if it is already always ill-fated and prone to disfigurements and aberrations to establish a general profile of any class of people; it is also very difficult, particularly for a white observer, to make an objective analysis of black Africans. Indeed, it is rather impossible for a white tourist to melt in into the black African society. Unavoidably, you will always be perceived as some kind of extraterrestrial alien; one with endless pockets stuffed with dollar bills. As sad as it may be, when you travel as a white tourist across Africa, the constant feeling that you have been stripped off your human condition, to become a walking dollar bill, is something you need to learn to live with. What becomes very quickly clear is that the image Western media project of Africa is as widely inaccurate and distorted as the image they get of our Western societies. Of course, in Africa they also believe our lives in the West is like in the movies. They understand TV as a window into the world, from where they can see the reality as it plays out. Consequently, they likewise wholeheartedly believe everything TV tells them, because they have seen it with their own eyes. They will never consider that perhaps, whatever the TV shows and does not show has previously cleverly selected and filtered to create a specific, desired state of opinion. Well, neither will we, so do not blame them. No matter what you tell them, there is simply no way you will be able to convince them that we are not all rich and life in the West is easy or full of opportunities for everybody. They will never understand why they would not be able to succeed, without first accepting to sell their souls to the system. That is not how it goes in the movies! If you dare to argue, they will make their point clear: "Look, you own that Land Rover, right? ...Well, that Land Rover alone is much more than all what I own together."
Putting everything together, I do not think it can be said whether their world is better or worse than ours. In a way, it is like if we try to compare current music with the music of the 60's, 70's or 80's. Better yet, it is like if we try to compare our music with their music; it is really not comparable. At the end of the day, I guess the old principle stands: we always disregard what we have and ambition what we lack. Probably, in this basic principle lies quite a bit of the attraction and fascination Westerners generally feel for Africa. Whether we perceive Africa as something totally new in our lives or, more like the opposite, we feel of it as going back to our roots, recovering contact with all what we used to have, but have slowly lost in our modern lives; the conclusion remains that Africa represents a totally different experience. Every morning, as the sun rises in Africa, the craving for the new adventure, the challenge and new learning experience the new day will bring, fills your heart and powers your soul. Indeed, every day is in Africa an opportunity for a new adventure and we certainly lived many of them during our journey.
The neurons in our brains generally respond more vigorously to novel stimuli. Given that attention to a specific stimulus gets attracted by means of higher firing rates, it seems reasonable to think that our brains are naturally more interested in new stimuli. In fact, comedians know well that the secret to any good joke is surprise. Interestingly, the mathematical definition of information is degree of surprise: that is, a message will contain more information the more surprising it is. It then only makes sense that we burst into laughter whenever we get surprised with a totally unexpected statement: it is an instinctive reaction whereby we express our appreciation to the author for his highly informative message. It shows our brains are always happy and excited to receive new information and learn new knowledge.
I will always feel fortunate that we had the opportunity to travel across Africa at such a young age. I will always feel proud that we had the insight and courage to build and grab on an opportunity like that. Yes, Africa is where our relationship fell apart. More precisely, that is where our love blew up; where all blew up. But I do not see how we can really blame Africa for it. Fact of the matter is, Alia and I, we both absolutely enjoyed our trip across Africa from beginning to end. We were both always fully aware we were doing something really special and we both always felt privileged we were living an experience we were going to remember for the rest of our lives. Over the last few years that have passed since our journey across Africa, I have thought and wondered many, many times how Alia remembers our journey and how she has been able to fit the memories of it with the puzzle of manipulated accounts about our relationship that has been engrained in her mind. These days Alia is totally convinced our marriage was a nightmare from beginning to end. Yet, just the emails she wrote throughout our relationship are there to show she has clearly been brainwashed into that conviction. In Spring 2016, at the beginning of that process, during one of our last phone calls, Alia explained, back then still apologetically, Africa had been too much stress for her. In fact, very early in our relationship, back in Spring and Summer of 2010, Alia had already advised me she was mentally rather fragile and could only handle limited amounts of stress. She certainly dreamed of traveling all over the world; but was afraid, the stress commonly associated with travels would ever make her break down and screw up. Travels are certainly stressful and traveling across Africa is probably so much more so. Indeed, we had stressful times during our Africa trip, but I really do not think Africa is to blame for our marriage's collapse. As a matter of fact, we had already gone through deeper struggles of that kind during our earlier travels across Central America and Europe. We had overcome them and had become stronger. As Alia explained through her emails, during our first two years together, she sometimes could not help getting mad at me for the most stupid reasons ever []. However, we both were able to understand what she was going through and how difficult it was for her. We never allowed our arguments to get between us; they never broke skin. Our love always remained paramount. When we went to Africa, we were prepared for anything.
The fact that we were both always fully aware we were doing something really special, admits little argument. We were as far as Namibia when Alia wrote Adrian Belew. A couple of days earlier we had visited Etosha National Park in Northern Namibia. In Etosha we had a total blast. Our two days in Etosha NP were like a dream come true. Generally, when you go to a place, particularly if you have been planning it for a long time, unavoidably, you create some expectations of how it is going to be. Unfortunately, very often the reality you find does not quite match the perfect image you have slowly formed in your mind. Fact of the matter was, we had almost reached the southern end of the continent, and, except for Kissama National Park near Luanda (Angola), we had still barely seen any of the big animals Africa is so famous for. That, however, had not been a disappointment, since most of the really famous national parks are in Eastern Africa anyway. Now, if we ever had any craving to see big animals; in Etosha we certainly got all what we could reasonably wish for. We arrived late in the morning and that afternoon we already spotted zebras, giraffes, ostriches and ...a rhino!! That rhino shortly before sunset was like the icing on the cake: we were totally thrilled. If, with my really poor eye-sight, it was already amazing for me, I can hardly explain how it was for Alia: she was in total awe. After watching that rhino for what seemed hours, we reached such climax, we concluded there was nothing else we could ask the day for, and decided to exit the park to prepare for the next day. Knowing that animals are particularly active during sunrise and sunset, we kept thinking about all the magic moments we were going to live the next day; from sunrise to sunset. As much as we both hate alarm clocks, we agreed we should set up an alarm for shortly before sunrise. This time it was justified. My old Nokia phone had for an alarm this really sweet and cheerful melody that seemed to have been written for babies. Alia had titled it the "Wake up Baby" alarm. In any other circumstance, we had hated to be woken up a few hours earlier than usual; but that morning was different. When the alarm went off that morning we immediately rose in anticipation of all the joy that day was going to bring. Yes, instinctively, we hated to be woken up, but as soon as our brains powered up, we realized we did not have a second to miss bitching, giving all the wonders waiting for us that day. Indeed, we had a long a busy day ahead. We were tired, as we had woken up really early and had not had enough hours of sleep. Yet, we felt like the happiest people on the planet, certainly the most fortunate, because our hard job that day was... to go see rhinos!!! Alia immortalized the moment singing her sweet and cheerful song: "Wake up baby. Go see rhinos!", "Wake up baby. Go see rhinos!" That was Alia's very own instinctive, unconcious, spontaneous and very sincere testimony of how fortunate she felt she could live a moment like that.
I am sure she was still in awe remembering those rhinos in Etosha, when she wrote Adrian Belew. It turns out, while she was watching that rhino on our first day in the park, Adrian Belew's "Lone Rhinoceros" song started playing in Alia's mind. So, she thought she would like to write and tell him about it. She thought her travels across Africa were really special, so she made sure to also tell him about it. Surprisingly, Adrian Belew, being a popular artist, paid attention to Alia's message and wrote back! He appreciated Alia's note and acknowledged the magic moment watching that rhino should have been. Apparently, he also remarked he had also always wanted to do a journey of that sort and was hoping he can do it sometime. That is when Alia mentioned the conversation to me. Alia perspicaciously pointed out : "You wonder what a person like that is waiting for; what stops him from actually doing it once and forever?" Indeed, I could not agree more with her. As a matter of fact, along our way we had met a lot of people who had made the very same remarks. Certainly, most people cannot afford to take off their jobs for several months to go travel across Africa. Those that do not have such jobs, may not have the money to do it. Then, there are other people who have various others commitments (like, for example, family) that make it impossible. We, obviously, did not know the specific circumstances of Adrian Belew, however, being a successful artist, who was 65 at that time, his words invited us to entertain the thought of how often we prefer to keep making excuses to avoid taking on our dreams. It seems like pursueing our dreams usually requires more courage than what we are ready to put: it takes to grab the bull by the horns. Instead, it is easier to keep putting it off, hoping someday it will be a better time. Although we know time will never bring us any better opportunity, unless we make a serious commitment to look for it. Everytime somebody told me he has always wanted to do a trip like ours, I replied, the key issue is not to get lost preparing for it. If you keep waiting for the time to be right; you will never do it, because you will never be fully prepared for an adventure like Africa. I remember, when I first met Alia, knowing I had been bicycle touring for the previous two years, she complimented me for being such an adventurous person. She explained, she also liked adventures, but subsequently clarified she first needed a plan. That certainly seemed very sensible. However, on a second thought, as those first days I was constantly looking for an opportunity to stimulate and challenge her, I pointed out perhaps those two concepts were somehow contradicting each other: an adventure cannot be planned throughout, or it will no longer be an adventure. In the case of Africa this consideration becomes very subtle; because, you undoubtedly need some preparation, before you venture into Africa. The secret is to take the decision to do it. Once you have committed yourself to it, you prepare the best you can, setting reasonable and realistic milestones and deadlines. The biggest challenge is to find the right balance between preparing well enough and understanding you will never be fully prepared. The bottomline is that the pursuit of any dream always comes with considerable uncertainty, and it takes quite some courage to handle all that uncertainty. The big challenge then becomes to find the right balance between the reward we expect to obtain the day we achieve our dream and the risks we are ready to take pursuing it.
I guess that is why Alia thanked me that morning of mid-October for having taken her to Africa. We were having breakfast and I almost choke with the surprise of her words. We had just entered the Republic of Congo and could, by then, very well consider we had reached the heart of Africa. We were all silent, enjoying the peace and tranquility of being in the middle of nowhere. Those days very often we found ourselves completely fascinated thinking we had really made it to Africa and we were now in the heart of Africa. It was an enormous accomplishment and we had quite some struggles trying to get full grasp of it and absorb it. I guess Alia must have been reflecting on something around that, when, all of a sudden, she thought to thank me for taking her to Africa. I certainly found it surprising she would come up with something like that. As a matter of fact, she had been the one who had been driving us all the way there from Spain; so, she definitely could had thought she deserved quite a lot of credit But, at least that morning, she felt she should give me full credit for it.
It seems to me her reasoning that morning did not get in any kind of analysis of what were each other's contributions and merits, and how they would compare. Rather, I think she simply reflected on the conclusion that, without me, she had never had enough courage to go ahead and do it. As a matter of fact, months later, she acknowledged that to me. She had already broken up with me and Robyn's poisoning process of Alia's mind had already begun; Alia had already started saying I was useless and had always used her as my chauffeur and servant, but still gave me she had never gone to Africa without me. If I was otherwise useless, my contribution was, obviously, the courage.
No comments:
Post a Comment