I hope to experience South Africa as a traveler, not a tourist — someone who finds amusement in the not-so-picturesque scenes, the ones that hold real stories of South African people. Someone more concerned with taking in her surroundings than capturing aesthetic pictures for friends and family on social media. Someone who engages in meaningful conversations with locals, who stays aware of how her actions impact them, and who takes time to sit with her thoughts and realizations that surface when spending time in a new country.
If I had to use one word to sum up my experience so far in Cape Town, South Africa, it would be awareness. There’s something about the sunsets along the promenade that never fail to make me stop and marvel at the pastel shades of pink, purple, and peach blending effortlessly into one another. I notice changes in the water’s movement and the commotion of the seagulls nearby. There is something about the unfamiliarity of new roads that makes me pay closer attention to every building and sign as I make my way around. There’s something about the way the lady at Checkers says the “Xh” at the beginning of Xhosa, the click consonant formed by her tongue, that makes me lean closer as she speaks. There’s something about the fact that I’ve only ever been approached by homeless individuals asking for food, never for money, that makes me question the caution-driven generalizations I’ve adopted from my experiences with homeless individuals in New Haven. There is something about the unfamiliar anecdotes and names written on museum structures that makes me hover a little longer at each artifact. There is something about everything, something that makes me feel more alive.
Although my heightened awareness has also made me realize how my manners, words, actions, and the way I sound make me stick out, as though I have a tourist label stuck to my back, I’d like to work on exchanging that label for that of a traveler, which I think has a more positive connotation to it. Although I will likely still sound the same by the end of week six, I can work on how I interact with my surroundings and the mindset I bring to each day to be more traveler-like.
