Cape Town, South Africa (2015)

At one point in my life I was friendly with the tiger cult from that popular documentary series, you know the one. Drinking Twisted Teas with them one night, the conversation turned to Africa. “It feels like home,” I was told by a member who goes every year to do conservation work with cheetahs. He alluded to the idea that there is something about the African landscape or even the resonance of the earth itself there that speaks to some deeply buried instinctual memory within the human psyche which recognizes the birthplace of the species. At the time I was unsure of the veracity of these claims, but some years later I would find out the truth for myself.

My ride-or-die best friend, Caroline, had gone to deliver babies in South Africa as a nursing student and returned changed by the experience, so when she suggested we celebrate her 25th birthday in Cape Town I leapt at the chance. There is little sense of chronology in my memories of this trip, which exists as a series of vignettes in my mind, but each one is a treasure that I hold dearly and return to often. Here are a few that stand out.

-Table Mountain looms over the neighborhood of Camps Bay, which stretches out down a slope towards the beach. As sunset approaches, clouds coalesce on the mountain’s flat top before spilling over the side like a vaporous waterfall. The magnificence of the display is incongruous with anything I have heretofore witnessed. This unbridled splendor of nature’s beauty remains with me to this day, and I recollect the memory when the world seems too ugly to bear.

-In The Company Gardens, Caroline buys a bag of nuts, intending to show me how easy it is to hand-feed the squirrels there. As the first peanut appears in her hand a flock of pigeons descends on her, unafraid. This is a moment of collective joy for everyone assembled, except perhaps the squirrels.

-We are almost 8,000 miles from home when we pull over at a scenic overlook. There is a woman there alone admiring the view. Since arriving a week earlier we have not encountered a single American, but when we speak to her we discover that she is from the town next to where I grew up. She has the same name as my mother. I tally this as a synchronicity.

-“Don’t say anything,” Caroline hisses at me as we enter the lobby of a fancy hotel of which we are not guests and make our way to the elevator. Minutes later we are alone in the rooftop pool, which makes me nervous, but soon it is hard to feel anything but contentment as we bask in the sun-warmed water, interlopers in a world to which we don’t belong, but find ourselves in, carried there by confidence. This is a lesson that I take to heart.

-Each time we drive to the city center, I keep my eyes glued to a patch of wilderness I have been told is frequented by zebras. They will be dirty brown and hard to see, I have been informed. The locals pronounce “zebra” with a soft e and it is impossible to not echo them when discussing the animals. I never see a living zebra.

-We are sitting in the afternoon sun on Caroline’s birthday with Cape Town’s magnificence as a backdrop. I do not think I have ever seen her happier. She looks like a golden goddess and I am staggered by her beauty and presence. Lion’s Head juts from the earth like a fang behind her and I reflect on the tiger cultist’s words about how Africa feels like home, as I see her at peace. It is a rare moment.

-We are driving to wine country in Stellenbosch. “Are those clouds or mountains?” I ask. They are mountains.

-Next to the highway is one of South Africa’s notorious townships, inhabited by the desperately poor. As a child I saw people living in tin shacks in America’s heartland, but this is poverty on an unimaginable scale. The barbed wire and shards of glass set into the walls surrounding our airbnb suddenly make grim sense. I wonder about the sustainability of their society, which seems fragile and balanced on a razor’s edge.

-We pull off on the side of the road where some vendors have set up tables, selling arts and crafts. Caroline approaches a rack of zebra skins. The great white hunter selling them reminds me of Crocodile Dundee, but without the charm. He has a craggy, sun-worn face that speaks of years in the bush and says little as we examine his wares. I wonder what sort of person I would have become had I been born in this beautiful, terrible place.

-The beach stretches for miles in both directions. We are alone. The sun is hot, but we don’t go in the water, which is full of sharks.

-We are sitting in the sun the morning before our return flight, both nursing brand new tattoos. I realize I feel a familiar longing for the place, and know in my heart I will return.

Two years later, we would go back, again taking advantage of the southern hemisphere summer. We would spend a lot of time with our friend Lameez, who is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most charming person I have ever met. We witnessed casual racism at a fancy restaurant, both came down with norovirus, and took a four hour round trip to see penguins. Despite this spectrum of experiences, I have barely scratched the surface of what South Africa, never mind the continent as a whole, has to offer and eagerly await my next opportunity to visit. I fear that it is a place that has difficult times coming, but try to assuage that sense by recognizing that many parts of the world may be expecting strife, but this shall pass as all things do. I hope to finally see a zebra, but more than that, I recognize the truth of the tiger cultists words, it truly does feel like coming home.