South Africa Travel Reflection

As the car slowly climbed up a slope, a red-bricked house came into my view. This would be my home for the next two weeks. In my last year of high school, I grasped the chance to enter the winter exchange program for South Africa, a country that I might otherwise never travel to without this acquaintance. Before going, the only knowledge I had of South Africa was the safaris, Elon Musk, and the faint memory that it is a third world country (which is wrong, by the way. All countries in Africa are third world except for South Africa). I had absolutely no idea that I was stepping into one of most amazing experience of my life.

On January the 18th, the travel group from WLSA met at PuDong airport. We took the Qatar Airway from Shanghai to Doha, Doha to Johannesburg, then the Airlink Airline from Johannesburg to Durban. We spent around two weeks at school, interwoven with experiences such as Giba Drums, ziplines at Giba Gorge, and the Hidden etc. Forest. After parting with my host, we gathered with other WLSA students who exchanged to African Leadership Academy and started our own travel around Durban and in Cape Town.

Living with a host family is wonderful for fully tuning into the pace and flow of local life. I recall fondly of huddling on the sofa, the whole family watching Friends together. I recall fondly of enjoying a game of backgammon while waiting for the crunchies to finish baking, the whole plate finished within 24 hours.

Not so fondly of waking up at 5:30 to prepare for school.

Life there is more slow-paced, relationship-centered, and thus appear to be much warmer and more vivid compared to the fast-paced and task-filled life I had in Shanghai.

Little phone addiction, plenty of energy and connections.

What astound me was how much they read.

The library is THE popular place for students to hang out. Here and there, you see people taking books off the shelf to read, pointing to each other the books they love, and gathering around sofas and tables. Friends of Holly all had a book in their bag that they will pull out when there’s a free period or when they have finished work. For those regularly bombed by information and buried by fragmented tasks, reading is a luxury. It is like dedicating a chunk of time for self-care.

Their love and respect of knowledge is prominent, shown in the general respect for their teacher and inquisitive silence after a question is raised. It struck me how much one’s environment/ a good school culture matter.

Something that I also find impressing is how diverse yet inclusive this place is. You can see people of different race and ethnicities talking and chatting happily when there’s strict segregation laws in place just 30 years ago. While you might feel that racism is a really thorny issue/hard-to-solve problem in America, people here seem to so easily dissolve it with compassion and empathy.

People remember their history well. And with profoundness.

I haven’t had the chance to go to the Nelson Mandela Museum, but the group that went said it was magnificent and stunning. There’s the character and personality of a country’s people that will never be obliterated.

An exchange like this can really show you how people grown up in a different place and nurtured in a different culture live their lives. It shows you the myriad of possibilities of life and raises the question “which kind of life do I wish to live?”. It’s a time where you form great and hopefully lasting relationships in a very short period. All those late-night story-telling and chilling together consolidates to a bond and connection not found in daily situations. When travelling, we open up our body and heart to embrace all occurrences and allow ourselves to be touched.

And I am so grateful to have this chance to see all those realities, had all those delicious meals, and above all, meet such a wonderful group of people brought together by the beautiful chance and destiny.

Hare Krishna.

Wish you a nice day~