Welcome to Africa
If flying from Miami to Amsterdam wasn't a long trip already, brace yourselves for another 9 ours from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro Intl' Airport, Tanzania. But as a frequent flyer who always takes flights lasting for more than 13 hours, I really shouldn't be complaining here.
So yes, I traveled to Tanzania, Africa during March this year on a school trip. But I don't really want to talk about how life-changing or how inspiring and yadi yada the trip was, I just want to point out some of my thoughts. Where did these thoughts came from? Well imagine what will you do every night without any electronics. I would think.
And that was exactly what I did.
When people are asked about their hobbies, a majority of them would mention travel. The same can be said about me. However, traveling for me is not just going to a place and relax. It means so much more. When I stood by the muddy shore of Lake Natron in Tanzania this March, I looked around me. With the hundreds of flamingos lighting the colorless sky up, the reflection of the volcano stood upside down right under my foot. Lake Natron is a place where you can easily find dead animal’s skeletons and rotten organs, but it is also a place where the Maasais have lived for hundreds of years; It is a place hidden so well in the middle of nowhere with a view like the end of this world, but it is also where the first human footprint was found. I know I was there, but I wasn’t. I was somewhere so far away from the lights of the city; yet so close to the sparkles of civilization.
This feeling of seeing and understanding the world in front of me is what travelling truly means for me. The shock that a great scenery can brought to someone being there is simply incomparable to anything that a picture or a video can capture, yet I wish my parents and best friends could be there with me to share it. However, they were not there. Just like the African children who lived there, most people on this planet does not have the fortune to afford travelling to faraway destinations. An African girl might enjoy the grand of a mountain guarding her door everyday and night, but she might never hear the noise of the city accompany her into her dreams. And the same can be said for someone who had been living in the city for his entire life. Modern culture taught people to chase their goals of money and fame, gave them an eye to find “opportunities” but blinded the other which could have helped them to seek the beauties of this world.
What my life have taught me about happiness has nothing to do with how much I own, but how much I could give. As someone obsessed with dreaming, perhaps my ultimate dream is to travel around the world. It's a simple one, one that most people would mention when asked about their dreams. But for me, again, it's different. Travelling the world is not only just for me, but also for everyone around me. Like some idiotic teenagers, I also have the burden to create impacts on people's lives. I wish when people see my photos, short stories, or just learned about what I am doing, it would ignite their passion in their lives, and simply push them towards the success that they once dreamed.
