The trip to Zambia that fortified my need to travel

I would be lying if I said that I felt right at home from the minute I got off the plane. Not to say that the people of Lusaka, Zambia are unfriendly, it is just that I did not instantaneously relate to the place that my parents were born.

Entering the country was a hassle-free process. A seamless progression from customs, to the carousel and out the doors into the arms of family members my adult self had never met. The car ride “home” felt so much like a tour because – in between asking me questions about myself, how my parents were doing and my life in South Africa – they would occasionally draw my attention to something outside of the car. Contrary to nightfall in my dead-silent neighbourhood, Lusaka comes alive at night. “Where I come from, the streets are empty by 7:30,” I said staring out into the flurry outside. They – having no personal experience of South Africa – had assumed it was because of the crime stats they had heard on the news.

The night air provided the perfect conditions for mosquitoes to thrive in and the two worked together to keep me awake the first few nights. Despite presence of the net, the repellent on my body and the insecticide in the air, that incessant buzz lasted long enough each night to drive me crazy.

The aromas and tastes of the food were the only things that were not so foreign to the foreign girl that everyone kept coming to the house to see. Thanks to my mother, those were things I grew up knowing about along with the buildings, monuments and places she mentioned whenever she recounted tales of life before I came along. The one thing that stuck with me was how surreal it was to see that those places looked exactly as I had imagined.

The oddest thing about my two-month visit was that opposed to going out and seeing Zambia, I spent most of my time on display. Family members and their friends came along in loads to see the Zambian who was not all that Zambian. I will never regret the experience though. In my time indoors, I learned to speak the language that my parents grew up speaking, I learned more about their culture and it gave me insight into the origins of my extremely Zambian name.

For as long as I live, not only will I never forget the day that I realized that I want to be a citizen of the world, I will never forget the days that I experienced my heritage as a foreign traveller.