Jack Johnson Inspired Post…About Africa.

Everything in quotations are lyrics from Jack Johnson songs. I do not own these lyrics, nor the songs, nor am I affiliated with Jack Johnson. I’m just a broke conservation biologist who was sitting around one night listening to his awesome music and started to make his music describe how I’m feeling.

Before I got to Africa, I had “dreams (that were) made out of real things”. Dreams that no one else could relate to. I was a “prisoner of (my) own past” and I “didn’t even know where to begin. (I) looked both ways but was so afraid.”

Africa. “There (were) no combination of words that I could put on the back of a postcard” to describe the sheer beauty and radiance of everything I saw and touched.

But, “it was not always easy. Life can be deceiving.” Every memory is burned into my brain, “and all of these moments just might find their way into my dreams tonight, but I’ll know that they’ll be gone when the morning light sings.” It’s a constant fight to “put the moment on hold.” To have just one more “night with the sunset” and one more evening with “just enough light to lay underneath the stars.” Every day is a mental storm, and when “the winds calm down, and nothing ever feels the same.”

It’s amazing how travel can make you realize how “the whole world fits inside your arms.” It made me “put down all my ammunition”; mental stereotypes that have no place or time in this entirely new environment. I got used to hearing the rhythmic sounds of foreign greetings; “bonita, que tal?” and “Belle, je ne compra pas Francais”. In the words of Jack Johnson, it just means that “you have to speak…some other way.”

I’m leaving Africa. I know I’ll be back, but while I’m gone, “I’ll believe in memories. They look so pretty when I sleep.” There just isn’t “enough time…no song I could sing, and there is no combination of words I could use” to describe how much Africa has changed me. “I heard this old story before where people keep a book of metaphors”; guess I just have to use that to describe everything I’ve been through. The only way to clearly remember my time here is to, “turn the page and read the story again, and again, and again.”

If my time in Africa has taught me anything, it has been that “we’re just moments. We’re clever but we’re clueless. We’re just human. Amusing and refusing.” And it sure has shown me over, and over again that “where is this all leading, (I’ll) never know.”

I’ve seen how unjust this world is. “Lord knows that this world is cruel, but I ain’t the lord, I’m just a fool.” I guess I could have “closed my heart and not care”, but “we’re all burning under the same sun” and even if “we could close our eyes (it would) still (be) there.”

We could say the wealth imbalance and the ridiculous political situations, Western monopolization, hunger, poverty, human rights violations, and environmental injustices are just “us against them. We could try (that), but nobody wins.” “In the true sense of the word: are we using what we’ve learned? In the true sense of the word: are we losing what we are?” I guess in America, the problems of the third world are simply “out of sight, out of mind.”

For me, the African sorrows and “tears are like mine.” I’ve given Africa my soul, but I’d “give more if I could.” I’m trying to help the situation with every ounce of my being, but some people say that “you can’t stop nothing, if you’ve got no control.”

“Maybe you’ve been through this before, but it’s my first time, so please ignore the next few lines because they’re directed at you.”

Going back to America, I’m afraid of the rat race; how we are “always…competing.” Even when, “everything we need is enough,” it’s still a never-ending race for more stuff, more kitsch, more shit. It’s enough to make me think, “how many train wrecks do we need see before we lose touch?” I think over and over again that “what is important to you is not important to me.”

My mind cannot rest when I lie down in bed at night. I just tell myself, “please close your eyes, woman, please get some sleep.” My mind keeps telling me that “if (it) knew all the answers (it) would not hold them from (me).” It’s enough to make me want to “close the curtains and pretend there’s no world outside.”

“Will it ever stop? How will this all play out?” Hopefully my “mind be will be free to go to sleep” when I’ve jumped into my dad’s big, German arms and kissed my two sisters on the cheek again. Maybe that will heal my soul. “I’ve had enough mystery”; I don’t like being unclear about my own thoughts.

I’m sad to leave Africa. “It’s going to sting when I leave this town. All the people in the street I’m never going to meet”, all of the wonderful stories I haven’t heard yet, and interesting animals I haven’t admired yet. I know that when I stuff my oversized bags into my rickety, yellow taxi, I’ll “feel so far away” even though “I’ll still (be) in town.”

Madagascar was “the experience that’s just begun”, South Africa was the “one that no one saw,” and Equatorial Guinea was “the one that left (me) wanting more.”

 “You might (have) noticed some hesitation” in my past posts to describe the complete experience I’ve evolved and survived through, but “too much silence can be misleading.” I tried to write about it all, but “words are all the same” and although “words…help ease the mind,” there are some thoughts that should just be kept private…at least for the time being.

So in just four days, I return home. It will be fantastic to just “see what there is to see”, “take a walk around”, “pretend it’s the weekend”, and know that “love is the answer…at least for the questions in my heart.”