A Traveller's Confession-Travel Gives You New Perspectives.

Until I got married, I never had a mind to travel to a faraway country, unlike almost all my close friends, who wished to get employed or married to pack away from there.  I was not rooted in a hard and fast reason that I can think of now other than my fascination with remaining attached to the comfort of my familiar world, which I took as perfect.  I feared feeling lost and disconnected from them once I travelled to a new country. 

After my travels and staying outside for this long period, if anyone asks me if I regret reconsidering my original decision about travel, my answer would be that I have overcome my discomfitures.     

I have become a permanent traveller.

After years, I have become a permanent traveller.  People talk about travel, which generally means making short journeys from one place to another, from one country to another, for entertainment, sightseeing, visiting family and friends and so on.   In my case, I stayed for extended periods in each country that employed me, and  I have been making short travels to my home country in the gap of every one to two years.  

In other words, I have become a permanent traveller.  People like me are called non-resident Indians.  These travels shifted my mind from one situation to another, impacting me positively and negatively.  However, they also make me grow personally. 

Travelling is a personal growth. 

Travelling is a personal growth; it provides the travellers with multiple perspectives.  

Travel gave me new perspectives.

I mentioned earlier that my hesitation to travel beyond my familiar boundaries arose from my fascination with remaining in the safe zone, most of which was cultivated by social and cultural traditions.  Familiarity made them perfect for me.

Change brings in emotional, political, cultural, and geographical challenges.  Leaving behind your home and those with whom you have nested a familiar, warm, and taken-for-granted emotional connection is not cool.  Meeting new and not-so-familiar situations naturally builds tension and doubts in you.  You feel lonely when dropped into testing and embarrassing situations.  

• Handshakes.

I remember the hesitation that inhibited me from handshaking with people, especially men, in the initial days.  You are creatures of habit.  Routines become automatic, and when you are forced to adopt new habits, they jolt you out of your comfort and awaken your consciousness.  

In my cultural consciousness, I was conditioned to think that a woman rarely comes face to face with people, especially strangers, particularly men.  Touching even a familiar relative was considered a social taboo, going against tradition and culture.  Then, you can imagine my reluctance to receive the extended hand of a strange man in the new country.

But if you consider a woman an equal citizen with others, how can one feel comfortable in a socialisation that restricts them otherwise?  Shaking hands is a way to respect a friend or a stranger and welcome them in the country I travelled to and in many other cultures.  

If any custom or tradition restricts one section of the people to keep them less and under control, it makes them uncomfortable.  Until you wake up to other cultural practices, such ideas never occur in your system. 

The above thoughts gave me a new consciousness, and I have been shaking hands with people since then.  No friend or stranger I have shaken hands with has made me uncomfortable in any situation.  I was convinced that claiming exclusivity in your habits was rude by denying the culture of people in a country you travel to and live in.  

I am sure that young and old women who travel to other countries for various reasons do not land in trouble because they shake hands with strangers, men and women.

• Women are treated less.

In my safe zone, women were kept under custodians during their lifetime: fathers, husbands, and then sons, which is never the case in any country I happen to work in.  That realisation made me rethink the cultural comfort I feared once to depart from.  

There were always exceptions.  Here, I remember my father, who was an exception to tradition.  He was never a custodian; instead, he gave me freedom and acceptance to reach my heights as an individual. 

• Life is not always a bed of roses. 

In Africa, I confronted backward situations of lifestyle, education, development, and women.  Africa has borne the starkest brunt of colonialism and imperialism compared to other nations in the world that suffered the same.  Those who bore the severest of it are the women and children. 

• Parental responsibility

In South Africa, I worked in a non-developed area inhabited by the Black population.  I cannot pass this post without mentioning what I witnessed there in raw parental neglect of children in poor families. 

Toxic parenthood is a reason children underperform in their lives, which is a universal fact.  Then what about absent parenting?  It was a trend for girls to get pregnant starting from a very young age, and who sired the children was never in the picture.  

Even among couples, men generally gave little heed to their parental responsibilities.  In such situations, children develop a little sense of self, and the possibility of straying away from accepted human norms and values and earning less academically is universal. 

Grandmothers surviving on pensions were those children's survival and hope.  Yet they struggled and survived.  They remained cheerful and robust in friendship and promoted a communal ethos.  One thing that melted me emotionally was their singing.  Music is the Universal language.  They have songs to sing for different occasions: when they mourn death, protest, celebrate weddings, and so on.   

I happened to visit their homes during bereavement.  One thing that amused me during such visits was their housekeeping.  The neatness and order in the reception, bedrooms, kitchens and toilets, and keeping the most aesthetic sense in everything.  

South Africa.

South Africa is the last country that celebrated its freedom from the colonial set of administration, apartheid.  In 1994, it became a republic with a constitution acclaimed as the most progressive in the world.  Apartheid was a severe smack on humanity and detested globally.  

The Constitution of new South Africa declared the country for its people, urging all races and cultures to work together and take responsibility for doing their best to bring the nation to its success. 

The biggest lesson Africa provides to the world is Ubuntu.  It is a humanism that can be expressed; "I am because of who we all are."

The nation is facing new challenges, often visited by troubled ghosts from the past and troubled by present corrupt politicians who should have done justice to wipe the tears of the oppressed.  

Something that makes me move is the people's ability to express their thoughts and strive to build a unified new South Africa. 

I live in a place where I do not have to prove to anyone what I am by birth and by my belief system.  While I enjoy this freedom and cordiality, I laugh at myself for once being misconceived about the comfort of my personal zone, where caste and religion are still a deciding factor in peoples' social-political existence.      

• Capetown is a world-class travel destination.

I live in Capetown, the number one travel destination in the world.  There is much more to write about my travels in this country, which I will include in my future posts. 💖

Conclusion:

In conclusion, after years of travel, my initial concerns about travel affecting my stability and the security I enjoyed in what I considered the exclusivity of my comfort zones were a misconception.  In the years of my experience in the countries I travelled to and lived in, I have overcome all of those and learned a lot of helpful life strategies.   

If you have any such experiences, please share them here.  I am happy to read them.  Thank you. 

This post was created for the Blogaberry Creative (Monthly) challenge.

This post is also for Blogchatter Bloghop (9-15 August) on #Memories

This week's #BlogchatterBlogHop winner is Prasannakumary Raghavan @prasannaragh 👏🏻

Congratulations! Reward points would be added to your wallet.

The winning entry is here: https://t.co/w9TxY5H4nY pic.twitter.com/5e1Ad4Xfco

— Blogchatter® (@blogchatter) July 18, 2024

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