Retreat

Candlelight danced across the belly of a giant baobab tree, and for a moment I found peace. There are many baobabs on Chizumulu Island, itself no more than a hill and a craggy coastline dropped surreptitiously in the middle of Lake Malawi, but this one had a gash in its bulbous trunk that let trespassers like me slip inside. The dirt floor was musky and damp, and gnarled walls enclosed the space like a fairytale parlor. This was my home for the night.

It is impossible to travel alone in Africa. For three months I had been, technically: From Cape Town to Zimbabwe, up to the northern reaches of Zambia then across to Malawi, on chicken buses, without knowing a soul. But there is a difference between traveling sans companions and traveling alone. No matter how hard I tried, I had not had a single moment alone.

“How many children do you have?” asked a woman who piled a sack of grain and a plump baby on my lap on a matatu ride out of Lusaka. “You need some children,” observed another at the border. “You can find the husband later,” someone called from the back seat. “How old are you?”

It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the friendliness—or more accurately, Africa’s community mindset, a bright contrast to New York’s isolationism—but despite the friendships and the colorful stories that filled my travel journal, I ached for time with my thoughts. I started dreaming of a deserted island.

The only way to reach Chizumulu was by fishing boat, and though not deserted, five hours bobbing across Lake Malawi atop cartons of Shake Shake malt beer and bags of smelly dried fish meant only the most determined of souls would be going there. Stillness greeted our arrival onto Antipodean shores. Hawks circled overhead.

Within the hour the village learned of the boat’s arrival, most notably its sole foreigner. I soon acquired a horde of children following my every move with cries of, "Mzungu!" that prompted more children to run from their houses to join the parade. A family took me in to their daily routine, cooking lunch and tasking me with washing the dishes in the lake. The reason I moved to the baobab tree was the morning I awoke to the sight of three tiny onlookers with their faces inside my tent, watching me sleep.

But as I journaled in the silence of that tree, the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti came to mind: We can only find ourselves when we're living in relationship with others.

The candle grew dim, and I prepared to face Africa another day.