Out of Africa

It’s hard to believe I returned from Uganda six weeks ago. At times a part of me still feels afar, strolling along red dusty roads, staring through screens of verdant matoke leaves; it is clear not all of me is here, my mind a bit unfocused and hazy, meandering and distant like a wandering stream in a hidden meadow. And yet the piece of me far away is fading, the memories and emotions of Africa losing their shape, the edges softening, the colors not so vivid; the details of my exotic rhythms losing themselves in the folds of my modernizing mind. People here will occasionally ask me about my time there and I eagerly recount beautiful moments, but I am beginning to feel slightly disassociated from those events as if I speak of another – maybe a character from book or film.

Maybe that was Karen Blixen. Maybe it wasn’t me in East Africa living among Africans, working with them side-by-side on a farm and setting off on adventures deep into the bush gapping at grazing wildlife, in step with men in colorful garb clutching iron spears and ancient traditions. Maybe that was a memoir of someone else attending to the locals’ ailments, navigating social schisms, skeptical of assumptions and convention; another silhouette against the expressive African sky.

As I straddle two worlds in my fuzzy head, I watched yesterday for the first time Out of Africa, feeling at once nostalgic and comforted, understood and vaguely envious. I am not sure why I never saw the movie until now, the genre one I particularly like, the character a certain source of inspiration, and like many, I am an ardent admirer of Ms. Streep; but, strangely, I missed viewing the Best Picture award winner until after living in Africa. Watching the romantic epic unfold before me against the paradisiacal plains of East Africa, I recalled my time riding through those sweeping vistas and long grasslands dotted with acacia trees, the excitement in spotting my first lions (they weren’t hunting me, but, more preferably, mating), and I again felt my feet sinking into the soft, springtime earth of the magical land of the Masai: the Mara.

The scenery, motifs, sentiment and characters of the film were recognizable and enchanting; I was captivated by the passion between woman and man, and woman and land. But the film reminded me most of the fascinating people, indigenous and transplants, I met: the gorgeous Africans living refreshingly in the moment, welcoming me with wide smiles and arms, their curiosity of me and I of them, remembering how those ties strengthen over time while I watched the woman in the movie tirelessly work to secure land for her tribes people, reminded of African youth and their delight in my novelties while I watched the local children in the film burst into giggles as the cuckoo emerged from the clock; and I also recalled all the backpackers and overlanders and aid workers taking up residence in Africa, disillusioned by Western notions on how life should be lived and what you should do and where you should go and with whom, meeting again in my mind the menagerie of expats and dreamers following their ideals, their passions, their morals, their hearts.

And amidst all this familiarity, all these people and ideas I came to understand this past year, the movie made me realize something else I learned during my time on the restful continent, a knowledge I acquired without fully appreciating it until watching the theme explored in film: the idea of ownership; that objects and people, knickknacks and relationships, land and souls, absolutely anything and exactly everything, cannot be possessed, that, in fact, nothing can be owned beyond that which creates and comprises you as an individual in ways meaningful and unique – our spirits, attitudes and memories.

And so now I try to remember more fondly all the people and adventures, good and bad, I came to know through my African life, and, just as importantly, I am trying to see more clearly that which I seek to experience next, that which I desire to call my own.