I’ve already made the 16 hour flight three times this year with a fourth trip in the queue. There’s an undeniable magnetism between my spirit and South Africa. I have theories about why this connection feels so strong but my most clear hypothesis is the relationship I established with the land on arrival.
In my ride from Cape Town International Airport to the farm I was staying at in Hout Bay, a notable warmth hugged me. There was the African sun, of course, which was a stark contrast after a December in London but I also felt this sweet release. For what seemed like the first time in my body, the past could stay where it belongs and I could be here in the now.
I got to my accommodation and was greeted with fresh lime water. I showered and climbed into bed for a nap with all the windows in my room open to the bay breeze. When I woke up, I took a barefoot stroll on the property and was greeted by the guys growing food on site.
To their surprise, I asked them if I could help. I guess guests aren’t normally looking to get their hands in the soil which was surprising to me. They showed me the day’s work of weeding and I got to it.
The month I spent in Cape Town was filled with solitude and intimacy with the natural world. I had arrived in South Africa very heartbroken and grieving but she held me there in my shadow. A layer of guilt sat on top of my pain which seemed inappropriate as I have the privilege of one way flights and chasing sunshine. This guilt released me when I came across the exhibition Tropical Depression by Mozambican-American painter Cassie Namoda.
In the interview with the gallery, Namoda speaks to the exoticism of tropical places and the view that they are for joy and happiness only, neglecting a darker reality that includes imperialism and climate change. Her paintings emerged from illness and the threat of a cyclone while in Mozambique and needing to get to Cape Town.
This show for Namoda was about polarity which resonated as I navigated my inner darkness in one of the most beautiful landscapes I’d ever experienced. In Cape Town, I let the beauty of hiking trails bring me to my knees in tears. I let myself feel abandoned and rejected. This allowing generated movement and eventually transformed me. Nature can make suffering manageable and alchemy possible. It’s in witnessing and integrating our own shadow that we can honestly face the shadows of society while reflecting on our role in futures beyond domination and extraction.
It’s important to consider the history and politics of a place as a traveler. While the impact of colonialism is sinister, we move like a settler if we don’t take note and consider what has transpired and where we fit into that narrative today.
Tourism is often colonialism rebranded. People manifest opportunities to explore new land just like European colonizers. In dreaming of a world where the West is not constantly extracting from the Global South, how might we travel?
Greet the land when you arrive somewhere new. Ask for permission and guidance. Befriend locals. Let what they want to share with you guide your experience. Most importantly, consider your offering and how you might sustain new international relationships.
Situated in a post-imperialist reality by decolonial travel writer Bani Amor, Hokūlani K Aikau reflects on the potentiality of tourism. Travel becomes not about the visiter but about the “sustenance of the people there” and inherently the land, as well.
Travellers must be really clear about what their contributions can be. This industry isn’t catering to a particular visitor experience, but rather the visitors are contributing to the survivance or the sustenance of the people there.
For the majority of people inside capitalism, travel is confined to limited vacation time allotted to workers by their employer and during that time exhausted people want to shut off which is strategic because it’s impossible to organize and disrupt systems of oppression when dissociating. I fully support the movement for people to claim more rest, especially Black and Brown people, but we can’t forget who’s labor our rest is at the expense of and our critical analysis must extend beyond representation politics to include class.
Travel has taught me that as people in North America, the UK, and Europe, it’s important to understand that in many contexts our racial identity becomes second to our national identity when we leave our country of citizenship. There is power in our home currency and power in our passports that we need to be cognizant of as we move throughout the world in order to mitigate harm. To reject extraction, we must pursue accountability and reciprocity. Aikau offers:
Your journey doesn’t end when you get home, either; once you establish all these relationships, you will continue to have obligations to where you went and the people there.
In a post-capitalist reality, we not only value the exchange of money and goods but also the sharing of knowledge and self. Voyeurism is a form of extraction and in the now-future, we can practice participation and co-building. Alan Pelaez Lopez offers important considerations:
…what will be your commitment to the villages you visit, and… do you commit to sharing your personal story with others? Because in my community, we are all storytellers and that’s the primary way in which we convene. If somebody is just witnessing everything, it is a kind of violence. It is another form of gazing at and refusing community building and community partnership, and also actively denying kinship.
When visiting new lands, travelers transcending extractive tourism should seek to understand how they can respectfully participate in the traditions of the locales we enter. We can begin embodying the practice of the futures we desire now. At Common Healing, we’re striving to facilitate this through Strange Fruit, our upcoming world-building immersion.
As Gogo Khanyakude and I prepare to host travelers in South Africa, we consider rights of passage and how to hold a group of members from the African diaspora connecting with the people and the land of South Africa. We hold an intention to facilitate mutual reciprocity and international resource sharing through this curated travel experience. Some of the ways we’re doing this are as follows:
Investing in Indigenous and Black-owned accommodations
Inviting locals to join in for any part of the itinerary
Hosting 2 Town Halls before departure to practice participatory decision-making and begin tapping into the energetics each person will navigate on this pilgrimage to resource ourselves
Bringing in several Sangomas to hold the ceremonies and rituals, each of whom will be offered Ukukhanyisa, or an acknowledgement of the light work Sangomas provide on an individual and collective level in the form of gifts, in addition to monetary compensation that is equitable
Archiving and sharing sacred knowing and memory through recording dialogue and soundscapes to familiarize travelers with the context they will be visiting in a podcast format
In our most recent podcast episode, Gogo Khanyakude speaks to ritual living at the center of indigeneity. As we guide travelers on this journey, we will facilitate inclusion and participation in what are closed practices which calls for a depth of gratitude and awareness to be permitted into such an experience.
In the episode, I mention fleeing where I’m from. I grew up looking at maps very curious about what else is out there. My familial migration stories lead me to believe my desire to travel is epigenetic but I also think not belonging in the community I was brought up in further dispatched me.
I also speak to a forthcoming episode where our guest, Mabafokeng Hoeane, points out that the greater the wound is, the greater the capacity for healing. I believe that. In not belonging, I committed to reconnection. Integration starts with polarity. Contrast points to the direction of our purpose.
I dismiss binaries because so much exists in between. The expanse between how people have traveled and how we might travel in the future if we successfully abolish harmful systems and structures leaves a vast arena for the power of imagination and creation.