Just under a week ago I wrote my last ever university exam that I will ever have to write. Unofficially-officially I am finished with a four year Anthropology Honours degree. Four years ago, four years seemed an awfully long time and I though I would be pretty sorted - have the world in the palm of my hand, have the world as my oyster etc etc. Suddenly, sitting here with (almost) an honours degree, I don't feel very world-holding, oyster-possessing. Suddenly my little degree feels very small in amongst all the big and growned up Masters, PhDs and professorships that is the academic world. And here is where I become a little stuck... What am I meant to do now? Supposedly I am meant to get a job, find a partner, settle down, have children ( I am a woman...) or alternatively, study further, get my Masters (and PhD), and in between this, still I must find a partner, buy a house, settle down, have children. Eish bhabha...
So I may have chosen a differen route, a little bit, just a tiny bit, of a more, well... different route.
Brace yourselves... are you ready? Here it comes...
I am leaving all and everything that I know - friends, family, a beautiful lover, dogs, further studying, marrying, settling down and children having (only 23, still have plently of time left for this) etc etc.
Yessssssir-eeeee! I am leaving all of this behind, selling of as much of my stuff as I can (you collect a fair amount living in a flat for two years), working like a demon in any way possibly (save selling my body, although only missing by a hairs breath) so that I can get enough cash, researching researching researching until my eyes bleed and finally packing a backpack and entering my first port of call - Mozambique.
What is all of this I hear you mumble, not quite wanting to believe the comprehension opening like a lotus blossom in your mind...
But it is true. I am leaving my home to go and travel in my beloved African continent for two years: May 2011 - May 2013. Maybe I am "running away", or "hiding", or "being irresponsible" or "foolish" or "unsafe".
For me (and really I am the most important person in this equation) the next two years are going to be a quasi- Rite of Passage. It is going to be my African Walkabout.
