manacled hipster...

Excuse me, is that a hand-rolled cigarette you’re holding?

America is chock-full of hipsters, yeah? Portland, Brooklyn, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco. Oh, friend… Wait till you see Africa. You've only got the remnants..

I think we probably more resemble what people would call hippies than anything else. Except that many of us are young professionals. In Jesus sandals, retro Ray-Bans, and beaten up Panama hats.. [I include myself in their ranks – therefore nullifying my ability to be a hipster – because they hate it when you call them that – of course, that qualifies me yet again for the title… but moving on..]

I've met teachers, researchers, conservationists, hotel managers, travel guides, and writers. Doctors, nurses, NP project managers, graphic designers, and chefs.

Some of them volunteer. Some of them work for NGOs and non-profits. Supervise school administration. Manage hotels in secluded, blissful places. Some are just taking a break from their career. They come from all corners of the globe.

[A legacy of imperialism.

The desire and ability to see the wonders of the planet. So far, often, from the ‘civilized’ places back home where we've stuck up casinos, hotels, mini malls, and parking garages adjacent to all the sites to see there.. ]**

We constantly try to seek out the fundamental experiences of living abroad.

The ones you get when you allow yourself to be cut off from home.

We hitch-hike, barter, beg, and borrow to make it from one place to another.

We travel insane distances overland to get to these places of wonder..

As a Peace Corps volunteer working 50 hours a week, I have had only a nibble of what Africa has to offer.. PC Volunteers are constantly under the umbrella of bureaucracy that is the US Government. If we leave our village for anything longer than a weekend, paperwork must be produced, signed and approved. Then again.. Every three and a half months, I can abscond from my village for a week or two or so during holiday.

The desire to keep tabs on volunteers is a good one. A necessary thing. 

But, damn if it doesn't feel like I’m in high school trying to make sure I don’t miss my curfew. Being in the Peace Corps you lose a chunk of your autonomy.  

The experience is worth it in the long run, but ooo-eee it’s a challenge walk that line.

I've got one year to go. One.

I’m excited to let a little loose.

Being this well behaved isn't good for my psyche.

Animal just wants to be free, man.. | Jungle Junction, Bovu Island, Zambia

 **The above is not to suggest Africans, or Namibians, do not travel, or that they do not qualify as hipsters. Quite the contrary. Also, I’m pretty sure Africa engendered the first generation of hipsters. We’re all facsimiles of the original.

this is never going to work.

So I met this Nomad in Kavango.
He is in the process of bartering his way around the world.
A year and a half into the process, in fact.
The man gets around... because people take him there... for free.

I admit. I was skeptical. In my head, I had a contingency for when things fell apart.
I figured, especially with me on along for the ride (as dead weight, essentially) that this would never work.

Check out my guest blog on The Nomadic Diaries to read about my trip with the Nomad which took us from Katima Mulilo, Namibia to Livingstone, Zambia to Mosi Oa Tunya Falls to Bovu Island, Zambia.

the view from the bar... | Bovu Island, Jungle Junction, Zambia

Spoiler alert... Somebody gets a black eye in this tale... .... .... It's me.

Remember 'more on this later...'? It's later. 

pick a little.. talk a little.

I'm not very good at being amazed by what people say.

I've never been convincing enough.

Sometimes, sure, you say something that triggers shock, horror, or interest, and I’m going to give you a gasp or a giggle.

If you mention that the world’s average IQ is dropping while I'm watching the inane formalities extended by those trying to leave a party, but are queued behind those both immediately blocking the door and offering their thanks to the host…
Rousing the idea that since the world’s IQ is dropping, we’ll probably have even more idiotic forms of goodbyes mixed with smarmy false gratitude in the future…
To which you reply that in a few generations, people will just start in with gratuitous group hugs. Everyone must be hugged upon entry. At business meetings, homeroom class, football games, the news room. Having to repeat the process for each straggler who comes in late.
It might go on for ages.

Anyway, say something like that to me, you’ll probably have me laughing. (You did, A—).

But most things? Pardon, was the laugh supposed to have been bigger? Apologies, were we supposed to have gasped at the big reveal? ... That was your reveal?

One feels it all the time. People holding out a laugh on their own joke until others are forced to join in out of social nicety. The expectant look on someone’s face as they wait for their genius to wash over you.. Their eyes wild and waiting.

If you've mentioned something you've just learned, and I happen to be familiar with the topic. I’ll say, yes, me too (in some form)… But I’m not going to lie and ask you to tell me all you've learned, doe-eyed and acquiescent. Or if you’re offering opinions, and mine differs, I might politely offer mine.

I’m not a jerk (most of the time).

Why, when people talk, do they expect no one to disagree with their thesis, and when offered another point of view, are affronted by it?

I've run into this quite a few times in the past couple years.

I’m not sure if I’m just getting older, and it’s because I’m surrounded by early to mid-twenty-year-old's. Or if it’s a symptom of helicopter parents. Perhaps it’s over-affirmation in the social media realm — the need for the +1.

Whatever the origins of such behaviour, it makes for intriguing people watching — particularly with your eyes on the person trying to escape a conversation — but often mind-numbing dialog to listen in on.

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.