I love Delta’s Flight Tracker. What first appears as a large blank landmass beneath you gains detail as you zoom in. The last few hours of our flight to Botswana, as we approached the coast of Namibia, South Africa began to take on definition. First Windhoek appeared on the map, then Harare and Bulawayo to the North, Gaborone, and finally, turning south, Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town. With the increasing detail, memories came rushing in as we flew over the continent:
- The beautiful wood-paneled overnight train from Gaborone to Bulawayo with soft pillows, warm blankets, and white-gloved porters.
- Camping in eastern Zimbabwe one Christmas, overlooking the hills of war-torn Mozambique, trying to imagine what life must be like for anyone living there. It was the first time the world heard of kidnapped child soldiers forced to kill their own families.
- The ever-irritating checkpoint stops traveling from Ramotswa to Mochudi. Everyone on the bus had to file out while the soldiers interrogated random passengers. Ostensibly, they were looking for ANC agitators, but clearly they enjoyed going through ex-pats’ backpacks, examining each and every item with great curiosity.
- The leaflets that would drop from the South African military planes telling everyone they were Botswana’s friends right before they’d raid a border town looking for ANC.
- The Whites only coach on the train from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
- The visit to Joburg with the Peace Corps doctor—an ivory collector, a closet racist, and incompetent to boot—Dr. T, as he was unaffectionately called, was a trip. A black volunteer and I needed medical attention not available in Botswana, so we flew to Johannesburg for treatment. We had to stay in the only area of town that allowed interracial mixing.
- And of course, my first wild animal sighting—a giraffe crossing the tarmac in front of a blood red setting sun. We had hitched a ride in the back of a Datsun truck heading back from Victoria Falls to Maun. I think I cried at the sheer beauty of the sight. Truly, a National Geographic moment.
I don’t know when I became captivated by Africa, but by 4th grade, I was hooked. I remember Mrs. Smith walking down the classroom aisle holding open the latest National Geographic magazine. She’d display pages of African tribesmen in all their regalia or herds of elephants up to their bellies in marsh water. She never did let us hold the magazine ourselves. I figure that she didn’t want us turning to the next page with the bare-breasted tribal women on display.
Later, teaching in 90-degree weather, in a concrete classroom with no windows and 45 sweaty, unbathed adolescent bodies packed together like sardines—it took a bit of time to get used to the girls unbuttoning their uniforms down to their waists to cool themselves. Foundation garments were a luxury that no village girl could afford and maybe didn’t even want.
