Be brave. Take Risks. Nothing can substitute experience.
19 June
Tuesday.
Today at work I designed the logo for Earth Fest, an event happening at Zambia (which I unfortunately will not be attending.. the project seems like (yet, another) amazing experience, but with timing and money, I don’t see it in the cards this time around, but hey! next year? Who says I won’t come back to Africa?) The Earth Fest sounds like a grand ol’ time, basically a party riding the train, across Victoria Falls.... drinking beer...awesome music.... what more could one ask for?! The Reforest Fest in Platbos was an amazing success and I was so thankful to have come at the perfect time and catch both weekends of endless forest fun. Zambia, of course, will be a different experience, as it is not a forest, and a much more extreme and humid climate. Either way, I think getting people together and making tree-planting, workshops (which are really hard work) and turn them into a real experience that at the end of the day, was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. And there’s beer! That’s always a great reward in my book.
Earth Fest Logo Design
Earth Fest Poster Design
We finalized the logo today, and pretty much finalized the poster to send off to printing at the end of the workday. (I did have to stay half an hour late - but in design, you just gotta keep going until you get the job done. Which could be half an hour, could be several.... but eventually you come to a point where you just have to say it’s good enough, for now.) The pressure was mounting in the afternoon, but pressure only motivates me to get the job done. The day was a bit hectic (as South Africans would say), as it was Misha’s final day in the office, as he heads to Zambia tomorrow. Since I won’t be going to Zambia, I had to say my first goodbye, and even though I still have two weeks left, it definitely started to sink in, my time here is dwindling. I feel like I just arrived days ago, and I’m settled into a place I can call home. Even though I have to get up and go soon, I know for a fact this will not be my last visit to Cape Town. Time here was shorter than my time in Paris, but already, I can feel it has been different, and in a good way. Paris was definitely an amazing place to live and I valued all I experience and learned while being there, but I don’t see myself dying to return.
Africa feels different. Cape Town feels different.
I haven’t been on a safari, so next time I come, that’s definitely first on my list. As I found Cape Town to be such a different place, I also saw so many similarities to Portland, which made me like it even more; a home away from home. I am so thankful for this experience, I never thought I would ever get a chance like this, and yet two months is such a short time when you really think about it. To really know a place, it can take months, years, a lifetime. I definitely found a part of Cape Town I must hold onto, which also makes me want more. To come back and really live here, become a local, get a job, do what the locals do (none of the touristy stuff you feel obligated to do when you arrive.) Someday I will make it back to this place, I can feel it, and I can hardly wait.
“I’m not sure what I’ll do, but- well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”
About six months ago, I found a movie called The Way, (on instant Netflix I might add) by Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen (who also play father and son in the movie). Emilio Estevez (Daniel) is in his fourties, and decides he wants to walk the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage along the coast of Spain. As his dad drives him to the airport, he tells his son he is insane for throwing his life away and going on ‘some walk.’ Soon after he starts the pilgrimage, Daniel dies in a storm, and his father comes to collect his ashes. He then decides to walk, with his son’s ashes, the camino in honor and memory of Daniel. Along the way, he meets all different kinds of people, and has a number of amazing, difficult, interesting experiences.
After seeing this movie, I decided maybe that would be a fun thing to do. Now, after further developing the ‘travel bug’ or ‘wanderlust,’ this pilgrimage seems like an important and worthwhile experience. A fellow Greenpop-er says she just did the walk herself, with her mom, and says it was an amazing experience. I think doing it with another person (one or more) makes the experience even more memorable. Obviously you are bound to meet dozens of people along the way, which also contributes to the adventure of the Camino. This brings me to another realization I have had while in Cape Town: that being independent is important, and if you’re never alone you’ll never really understand who you are, but that experiences should also be shared.
When I came here, I thought I was going to be living in my own room, and be doing my own thing the entire two months I was here. When Door #1 opened (really we are Room 1) and I saw one, two, THREE bunk beds, my first reaction was, holy hell, what did I just get myself into?... It was one room, with six beds, and four roommates. Oh, and one bathroom. Sounds like hell? My original thought was get me out of here, I want my own room.
Right now I could not be feeling farther from that first reaction. In my first four weeks here, in that room of five, then four people (two boys, two girls) was probably some of, if not the best time I have had in Cape Town. I met people I never thought I would, who at first, I was bound to hang out with because I lived with them, but I never really thought how much I valued the time with them until they were leaving. First one, the next week the other, and finally the last one left a week ago. (If you guys are reading this now, I really do miss you.) The Scallabrini familia was and will remain one of my favorite parts of this whole experience in Cape Town; the family dinners, the trips to Eastern Food Bazaar, riding on Long Street in the back of the bakkie, juice shots at Sir Juice, the list goes on.
I came into this experience thinking I needed to be by myself to make the realizations I was waiting for, when really I was given such a different and truthfully better experience than I could have asked for. I do enjoy the time now being by myself, but it definitely gets lonely fast, when after four weeks you become accustomed to having people flow in and out of the room. So even if I didn’t show it at the time, I actually loved every minute of it.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”