Johannesburg : "Welcome Home", a Truth I Needed
Looking back, this is ignorant to say but at the time I never thought Africa would look so beautiful.
Prior to this trip, Africa wasn’t the highest on my list of travel destinations. I mean, I have always had that feeling that Sincere had (Nas from Belly); the desire to see the land that my ancestors were dragged from but it always seemed like such a distant pursuit.
For some reason, it’s hard for other races and ethnicities to understand why Black people or “African-Americans” have such a spirited disengagement with the Continent that we should call home but it’s because so many of us have no connection at all to Africa. Even those of us that have grown up around 1st-generation Africans, see our cultures almost as opposites, their elders seem to hold a distaste for our youth, and our cuisines aren’t even close to being the same. So at the time, I was never shocked to hear Black people’s indifference with ever taking the trip but oh how uninformed we really are.
So how did I finally decide to make the trip? In all honesty, I had no choice and if it was up to me, I might have procrastinated even longer. I owe my experience and the shift in my perspective to Ebonee Davis (@abenajoy). Ebonee started an organization that specializes in heritage tourism throughout the Black Diaspora, meaning she takes a group of Black Americans back to Africa on a historic tour of landmarks and important sites in Black history. I was booked by her organization to capture the trip, the experiences, and the people as they see the homeland for the first time; an experience I am more than grateful to say that I witnessed in my lifetime.
Tip 6 :
Don’t believe everything you hear or read. Develop your OWN perspective
Everybody that I told about my upcoming trip to Africa had only negative things to say. “Why would you go there?”, “Isn’t it dangerous?”, “I hear you aren’t supposed to drink the water”, “Be careful, they aren’t used to seeing money”, “Don’t walk around with your camera, you might get robbed”.
These are all the things I hear about most countries I’ve traveled to but it was especially a cause of concern when they heard “Africa”. What I learned most from traveling in general but to South Africa to be specific is that the American mass media propoganda is designed to want to keep us within the invisible barriers around us. They want us to fear the possibilities of what can happen elsewhere so that we spend all our money here. Why do we only see the negatives of these other countries on our news outlets, when they see the best of the US on theirs? It’s quite an interesting experience to see both sides in motion. At the beginning of Trump’s presidency, we touched down in January of 2017, the news about the craziness underway domestically barely reached Joburg or Amsterdam airways but the pop culture allure was plastered everywhere.
From the time we landed at the airport at the beginning of the trip to the time we left the airport at the end of the trip, the native South Africans showed us all so much love. We clearly stood out, as only Americans could lol but it came with so much love, as only family could.
“Welcome Home Brother/Sister”, was a greeting we were met with everywhere, from the places planned on our tour to the random places we visited on the way. I saw groups of people that looked as if they could be family, sharing traditions and rituals that we were told date back centuries. I was shown that the Blackness that my skin is covered in and the ancestral blood running through my veins is the same that runs through theirs.
The other surprise was how truly beautiful Joburg was. The city had buildings, parking garages, stadiums and paved highways, something we rarely see of African countries in the mass media. The city had 5-star restaurants, malls, and hotels, something else we rarely see in the mass media. Even the food we ate at these restaurants was some of the best food I’ve tasted in my life, still to this day. Their use of flavor, the way they cooked the food, and the presentation of it all, chefs kiss. I truly felt at home.
