sunday's tangent

I was only half-listening. 

Some of the newer volunteers were talking about renting a car for travelling around in South Africa.

My immediate impulse was to tell them, 'No, don’t go that route.. You can bus and make a deal with a taxi driver… It can be more fun to not have a car…'

As the words came out of my mouth, they sounded absurd to me.

I wondered why, one, I felt so adamantly over how these girls traveled.. Then, two, why was I all up on overland travel the moment?  Am I hoping to simply subject others to the pain in the ass I've to look forward to in short order? Do I actually think that travelling in Africa via that method is more ‘legitimate’ as a travel experience?

The volunteers make their way out, but my brain is still wondering..

A few from my group replaced them, and gathered into the recently vacated living room. We started talking home to work proximity. They’re living on school grounds. I’m 2 km from my school. Which means if I attend regular school hours, plus afternoon, plus evening study… I often walk up to 12 km a day. (It wasn't a competition... I’m just not fond of physical exertion.)

Then I started thinking about the way people — in Africa, America, and any old place transport is available to us… We all just swing ‘round to the store in the donkey cart instead of walk.

And the modes of travel?

The levels of expense we consider or are willing to spend and the different experience that each mode gives a person. Biking, motorbike, horseback, car, helicopter, aeroplane, boat… submarine.

What is gained by the speed in which we travel to our destination? And what is lost by increasing the speed at which we reach what we were after?

Not everyone considers walking meditative, do they?

As one who does, it’s hard to imagine the alternative…

Can one wander blankly, really? Perhaps one is just counting the steps home because their back is killing them, and they've just stepped on another god-damned camel thorn that went through the sole of their flip flops... ?

On hot days… I think on the latter.

This was one of those days. It led me to the following realization..

I’m an idiot. I know better. And I have closed toe shoes in my bag. Idiot.

I’m choosing to wear the exorbitant but incredibly cheap, extremely foolish footwear.

But that’s it, isn't it? Same as the mode of travel.

As I was walking about cursing myself, counting steps, cursing my damned shoes, and telling myself to suck it up, because the people walking next to me don’t have a pair of sneakers nestled in their belongings as an alternative..

Wealth is the speed (and comfort) at which we can afford to make something travel.

Walking, biking, riding, driving, boating, flying. 

These modes of travel. The speed of transporting information and people. 

And if it all starts with walking, it all starts with shoes, right?

Shoes were the original ostentatious, but completely practical, 'display' of wealth.

The flimsier the shoe worn by the person who was able to afford more practical, and, frankly, safer footwear… Likely had a method of transportation that might explain such an unwise choice, and a disposable income to replace the constantly ruined pairs.

.

Perhaps, too, though they are just an idiot. Like myself, the thirty-year old who chose to trudge through ankle-deep sand with thorns and broken bottle bits while wearing a pair of flip-flops.

Then I was wondering... Why I would tell myself to keep walking earlier? 

I can afford to upgrade my footwear. I’m carrying the alternative on my back putting it to no use.

This tangent was abruptly halted (and promptly forgotten) due to the realization that someone was following along behind me and singing ‘Halo’ at the top of their lungs as they attempted to match my pace. It must have been going on for some time… Because I remembered thinking in the midst of my woolgathering that it sounded like a hyena was singing a top 40 hit somewhere. It wasn't until the people in front of me started craning around to see where on earth that racket was coming from… that I realized they were looking immediately behind me.

Cursing my shoes one last time, I took advantage of the benefits of my daily walk and sauntered off through the deep sand leaving the man 'serenading me,' who I assume was a pot-bellied drunk idiot in a too tight t-shirt, out-of-breath, in the dust. I didn't bother to look back.