A Few Initial Reactions to Africa

I had always known the world was round. My father had an old yellow globe which I would spend hours looking at when I was younger. I knew we lived on the top-half, so that explained why the Earth was planted firmly beneath us. I always wondered if people in the bottom-half of the world experienced life upside-down, or worse, clutched onto the grass so that they would not fall into the blackness of outer space beneath the Earth.

I later found out about the spinning of the Earth and gravity, and all of those things that explain how we live on a ball suspended in nothingness. I can remember standing outside school during a recess break closing my eyes and "feeling the Earth move." I was certain I could feel it spinning. I just had to clear out all thoughts and I could feel it.

I stood outside in the warm African sun with the city of Johannesburg in hazy view in the distance. I closed my eyes, and I swear I could feel the Earth spinning, and spinning a different way than I had ever felt it before. Something feels different, yet I cannot quite place my finger on it.

I don't know exactly how to explain my first initial reactions to Africa. It's different from North America, but many things are really the same. Or is it that it's the same as North America and many things are different?

My only experiences so far deal mainly with the city of Johannesburg and the outlying suburb to the south that I am staying in. There are a few things that I have noticed off hand, that are different to an American straight off the plane.

One of the most obvious things are driving on the left-hand side of the road. I, thankfully, have not been put into a position (as of yet) where I have had to endanger the lives of countless innocent South Africans by driving myself. It is strange to ride on what should be the driver-side of the car with no steering wheel. I have been surprised that no matter how long I ride along, and no matter how much I convince myself that we are safe on the left-hand side, every turn made receives the immediate visceral reaction in my head of, "We're on the wrong side of the road! I am going to die a horrible and frightening death!" which then is quickly tempered by another thought, "No, dummy, the left side is the RIGHT side! How many times do we have to go over this?"

In terms of cars and driving there are a few other noticeable differences: The vehicles for the most part as smaller. The roads are also much narrower than the roads in the US. I was also surprised by how many people walk the paved streets of Johannesburg (and I'm interested to find out if this is a common thing in other places in South Africa). There are many places where there are no sidewalks, so it makes sense to see people walking about on those streets, but even where there are sidewalks present, people are often walking down the middle of the street where vehicles are driving past (very closely in some cases due to the narrow roads).

There are a few other things that remind me I am no longer in North America. The trees are different, and it's hard to explain why. These trees are definitely more tropical in nature, but they are different from the tropical trees I've seen in Florida and other places in North America. There is something about their shape, their leaves, their size (they don't seem to grow as tall as most trees in America do) that makes them uniquely African. Perhaps that is the best descriptive term to give them: African.

Another small but noticeable difference are the bird calls. They are much different than anything I have heard throughout the United States. They are very beautiful, and another reminder that I am somewhere new.

In terms of weather, I am told that the heat at this time of year should be sweltering, but it has not been that way, yet. It has been a very pleasant 20-something degrees Celsius, which has no relevant meaning to me whatsoever. All I know is that it has been a welcome change to the bitter cold of the past few weeks in Wichita. Summer showers have crept up out of nowhere, and disappeared as quickly as they came. Last evening, I fell asleep to the sound of mighty thunderclaps. For a boy who grew up in the American Midwest, that was the most comforting similarity of all.