Nearly there...

I’m in Johannesburg Airport at the moment, waiting for the short final leg of my trip. I’ve been traveling for about thirty hours, and in a few more I’ll be in the Botswanan capital of Gaborone, hopefully settling in. Though clearly summer outside, it’s not too hot here at the moment, less sweltering than I’ve felt in Vancouver in July, which bodes well for the climate in Botswana a few hundred kilometers northwest. I’m stinking and sweaty nonetheless, a byproduct of a full day sitting on planes and lugging forty pounds of necessities on my back. But I’m almost there!

The flight from Vancouver to London was blessedly uneventful and surprisingly comfortable, as the seat next to me was unoccupied and British Airways remains one of the world’s few pleasant airlines. After an edible dinner, I got 30 minutes into Alien Vs. Predator before sleep took me away from the cheesiness. I woke an hour before landing, cursing my failure to spend the flight writing about my upcoming trip, but thankful for the rest. The longer flight, to Johannesburg, was still to come. I passed the six-hour stopover with video games and necessary shopping, and boarded impatiently when the opportunity arose.

In the midnight shade Europe was just a patchwork of indistinguishable city lights. The Libyan shoreline was more interesting, an astonishingly bright outline of the waterfront as far as I could see, the sort of luminosity afforded only to oil-producing countries. Libya soon faded into the Sahara, which is surely a fascinating flyover in the daytime but offered very little spectacle at night.

I crossed the Equator for the first time, at 5:13 AM Johannesburg time, November 5th. As I passed this personal milestone, a lightning storm illuminated the clouds we passed around and through. The storm stretched for several hundred kilometers, intense silver flashes firing several times a second in every direction, a fascinating show. Occasionally I could peek at the Congolese (I think) landscape below through the front, and even in the predawn darkness the thickness of the jungle was undeniable. Alternating shades of deep grey and deeper black hinted at the topography of the land, but sharper details escaped me. Once in a while minute, constellations of light sparkled from the ground, clusters of perhaps a dozen street lamps, a thousandth the brightness of even the small European towns I flew over hours earlier. These were, I surmise, tiny villages or mines buried deep in the jungle. Their miniscule size and apparent isolation were the first real hints I’ve had at what I may see in the months ahead.

Eventually the storm clouds dissolved and the sun surfaced on the horizon. For me, and probably for most people, any adventure as intimidating as moving to another continent brings doubts and apprehensions. It’s hard not to transpose yourself to somewhere so dramatically foreign for such an unreal length of time without frequently wondering, “What the dammity dammity hell am I doing?” But as I watched the perfect orange sunrise over the jewel lakes at the heart of Africa, it was very hard to remember my fears.

The pale green of the southern jungle gave way to carefully delineated farmers’ fields shortly after dawn, and I began to see the glint of reflected sunlight from the tin roofs of the presumably poor villages below. Eventually, Johannesburg itself came into view, and startled me with its size. The city is absolutely immense – I’ve seen far more populous cities, but none with sprawl to equal Joburg. I was surprised by the obvious opulence of huge portions of the city, less so by the shantytowns stretching alongside the clearly middle class neighborhoods. Golf courses were omnipresent, and at least fifty kilometers distant from the airport I could see a gleaming downtown of skyscrapers and superhighways. The city spilled over every horizon I could see from my tiny window, past hills and lakes and vast yellow-green fields. It’s huge.

I can see effectively nothing of the wider South Africa from the airport, unfortunately, but I’ll be back here in a few months, maybe less. In the meantime, I’ll be seeing whatever I can of rest of southern Africa. As soon as I have more to write, you’ll hear it all.