lost in africa and other adventures by leah moriarty

I leave tomorrow for Cape Town, South Africa, and all day I have just been kickin’ it with my dog Ramona, not really feeling the nerves inside of me. The nerves will not hit me until I board the plane, as per usual. I have spent this whole summer reading, discussing, hearing stories, looking at photos etc., but no matter what I read, hear or see in pictures- I will never be able to anticipate any experience or know exactly why Morgan gets a whole new orb of energy every time I mention Cape Town.

I was on the Super Shuttle leaving D.C., I was crying, naturally after saying goodbye to some very important people in my life, when the girl on the shuttle next to me became appalled when I told her I was going to Africa for the next year. “Why would you ever do that?!” she said as I blow my nose in the seat next to her. I just replied, “I don’t knowww” and immediately shut myself away from the girl with my white ipod headphones.

Then I thought to myself: “Wow, I really have no idea why I am doing this for a year.” And then bit my lip to fight back more tears. After the driver dropped the girl that did not know how to react to crying strangers off at her terminal, he asked me about where I am going next year. He was from Cameroon and was so eager to tell me about West Africa. He instantly took away some of the doubt I was carrying after spending the summer with friends who I will miss dearly. I do have no particular reason why I have decided to go abroad for two semesters, but as petrified I am at the idea of being gone for so long, I know that the experience I will have will contain the best stories in my hypothetical autobiography, and that the important friends will be there when I return.

“But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else’s story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, depth of content, the universal themes. And I don’t care what those themes are- they’re yours to uncover and stand being- so long as, at the very least, there is courage. Guts, Mut, in German.”- Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl