Nostalgia for home hits me at unexpected moments, but what has surprised me about living in Johannesburg is that I don’t miss home as much as I expected I would. I throughly expected to have the same reaction when I moved to Johannesburg. I girded myself to miss the U.S. and I waited for it to happen.
According to TripIt, I logged over 382,000 miles to 8 countries and 21 cities in 2014. Traveling has become a way for me to unwind from a hectic work schedule and to meet and interact with people, since my social life in Johannesburg (even after a year) is non-existent. Traveling has allowed me to better understand and connect with the history, cultures, and cuisines of South Africa.
South Africans often ask me why I left the United States to move to South Africa. It’s not a purely inquisitive question, but one laced with a hefty dose of, “are you crazy.” And while it’s easy to formulate an answer explaining why I came here, it can be harder to articulate why I want to stay.
I have had my fair share of horrible travel experiences. Two concussions in a week and visit to a French hospital. Check. Robbed of all of my possessions on the first night of a six week trip in Chile. Yes. Forced to spend the night in a Moroccan home until we bought carpets. Yup. And, according to a recent New York Times article “Great Vacation? Don’t Brag to Your Friends,” my social networks would rather hear about these travel mishaps than my recent trip to Cape Town.
I was acutely reminded of Thomas Wolfe’s novel “You Can’t Go Home Again” during my two day whirlwind trip to Washington, DC. In the days before I moved from DC to Johannesburg, I walked up and down 14th Street in my neighborhood marveling at the number of eateries and high-end condos that had sprouted up over the course of the last few months. I fretted that when I returned, my city would be unrecognizable.
