Inner Peace (Part 1)

Being in Africa was a kick in the pants. The short is that it was hot, humid, dirty, and very different from what I was used to. Visually, the streets of Luanda were cluttered with buildings in various states of disrepair, people selling and/or carrying things, and massive amounts of garbage and debris. I could not spend my money as nowhere took plastic and I had all of $15 American on me. Not to mention that the prices were incredibly high - a couple of slices of pizza could run someone $25! Then, of course, there was the difference in all of the people I saw. You'll laugh, I know I still do, but I fully realized that yes, there ARE a lot of black people in Africa. I have recently been called "aesthetically focused", but really, I am likely to be just slightly more visually focused than the average person. I do, after all, think visually, but I'm not sure how different this makes me than most people. Regardless, the visual affect of this difference in skin color was striking. I grew up around white people and even here, I am surrounded by light colored people. And central Africans aren't just "black", no, it was the most amazing dark skin I've seen in my life. I got really really jealous too.

This is the first part of a series attempting to document the experience I had in Africa this time around. Last year, I heard "try spending a month in silence" from a Jesuit graduate student as a kind of justification for his religious outlook. He had spent a month in silence at a monastery and was unable to really explain what happened to him and how it made him more religious. Well, I can't claim a month in silence, but I went through a sensory deprivation and mental shock that resulted in a higher awareness and a sense of well-being - likely something like what the Jesuit experienced. I found inner peace on the last leg of my trip, the flight from Frankfurt to SFO, while suffering from jet lag, listening to Mandarin pop music, and thinking about good things. The experience had nothing to do with a spirit or an ethereal being, but everything to do with my own brain. I quite enjoyed it. I had a few factors that led to this completely non-spiritual experience, starting with acute emotional stress and a high degree of rational confusion right before leaving for Africa.

In many ways, this visual difference was exciting to me, but the work was a little difficult, and my co-workers sometimes frustrating. In time, it dawned on me that I was chafing, unconsciously, from patronization as well as coming to terms with my own less-than-desirable behavior. This became apparent as a result of cultural, racial, gender, generational, and language differences. Well, those are some of the sociological differences I could identify, which were very significant and made my job that much harder. Much more can be said to these differences, but that is an essay for another time. Now that I've experienced the differences, I'll be better prepared for next time. That covers the visual and cultural differences, on to the other shocks.

I also had to eat a diet completely separate from what I am used to. First and foremost, I had to eat meat. Having grown up eating meat, I'm not good at getting protein from non-meat sources. The only non-meat sources in Africa are maybe beans, but those are not a given. There also was not guaranteed to be fish at every meal I was served. I think I had most common types of meat - pork, beef, chicken, and I even had duck for what I think was the first time in my life - it wasn't bad. In the second week, I started to notice that I smelled different, and I got really excited to return home for some sesame tofu from Whole Foods. The other dietary change was the lack of cold foods. I had never realized just how much cold food I eat until every single meal I had consisted of only hot food. When I returned to work in the first week of December, I had a typical salad for the first time since returning and it was like the best food I had ever tasted.

Sight, culture, and taste, next is the feeling sense. On that front, it was hot and humid all the time. My hotels, office, and the room I was at at the industrial camp were all air conditioned, but I did find myself outside a lot, especially at the industrial camp. I tried to stay inside as much as possible, but there were times when I couldn't get inside and wasn't near shade. At those moments, I realized that if I was outside for too long, I could very well die of exposure. It wasn't nearly as bad as the time in 2001 when I thought that I might die from cold, more like the night two years later when I looked into the sky on a cold Minnesota night and realized just how cruel the universe really was.

But back to the Industrial Camp: We took a plane from the mosquito infested Luanda airport up to Cabinda, then got on a helicopter to the camp. As we arrived, I saw flames on the ocean, then after having my bags searched for contraband, we got into the camp. "Are those birds?" I asked, hearing chirping from the trees. "No, they're bats," my colleague stated. We walked to learn about our rooms, then I walked back to my room. A bare room, with a closet, a desk, a TV, and a twin bed. The walls were metal covered in something and I shared a bathroom with a rather hip Angolan girl. I went to eat at the cafeteria, and at first was happy with the food. After six days, I thought differently and was on the same page as the European woman sitting near me who I overheard say "this is eating for survival".

Every morning, I got up to the sound bats returning to the trees and the sound of fire. I put on my jeans, a thin t-shirt, and my blue hoodie then walked to wherever it was I was going to work. Some days, I went back to my room for a nap to the sounds of BBC World or CNN International. I returned to work in the afternoon, later starting to listen to Ani DeFranco on my iPod. At 6, I would log on to my personal internet sites for some focused conversation with non-work people, then before 8, I would go to a cafeteria. First, I ate at the cafeteria, but later I went to the place to get the take-away meal to eat back in my bare little room. There I could set up my computer and type things (I had no internet access in the room), shower, eat, and watch whatever documentary was on the TV. After a while, I realized that I longed to watch something without any kind of serious plot - I just wanted to laugh. Unfortunately, the only comedic entertainment was in the form of movies, which require a serious mental investment into the plot. And if that wasn't enough, the plot was usually really stupid, misogynistic, and/or otherwise very insulting. I did have some great laughs at the documentary asking if humans were really visited by aliens in the past, but I don't think the creators intended it to be so funny. Maybe they did.

So what have I explained now: cultural, visual, audio, and entertainment differences along with differences in sensations of the mouth and entire body. This is enough for now. I want to point out at this time that this Africa experience, while stressful, was incredibly positive and life changing. Everyone should get to experience such things.