This has been sitting in the metaphorical drafts folder of my mind for a long time.

It is no small, insignificant feat to attempt to put into words what a connection to Africa means to me, how the iconic shape of the continent, yes the whole continent, has shaped me. 

And I’d like to note that I changed the beginning of that last line from “my connection” to “a connection” because to know Her is to know Oneness; it is to know a flow state in which one’s preoccupation with ownership dissolves, where you surrender to the rhythm of the sun and the moon and what She may take and what She may give and you are never left wanting, only thanking.

An immigrant couple, half Slovenian and half Egyptian, moved to America for all the reasons people do at the time they did, raised two American kids, one of which went on to partner up with a Zimbabwean man who left everything and his citizenship in his homeland, to create another unknown life, and raise two kids of his own in America.

**in Florida, of all places he’d never been.

He couldn’t stay away. He never would have left if he thought he’d never be able to go back. He remained connected to Africa and its wild places through his day-to-day work. His kids reaped the benefits of a sibling life as offspring of an ex-safari-guide-turned-travel-agent,

I mean, **-advisor. 

As a product of my privileged position, indirectly connected to some of the most successful safari-operators in the world before I could utter a little lion roar of my own, I have witnessed demonstrations of what it means to be wild by those whose only way is wild. The beings, animals and people alike — redundant, I know — who make up this world are story-tellers, orators. It is in their bones or it is in their water or it is in their stars, so clearly watched way out there. 

I find myself speechless, here. I want to do their world, one I want to be mine, justice in speech and in writing. 

I find myself humbled as a story-teller. 

Of any artist I wish to elevate, She has the most to say. Her humble message is disguised as “quiet.” But she is not quiet. The vibrations of the sounds I have found out there — on the same weed gummies as my brother, us looking at each other in awe, knowing that we are both hearing every single bird and every single insect and every leaf in every breath of wind — they are the sounds that burrow into our nervous systems and plant seeds for a deep, restorative sleep, and I believe these are the very vibrations, the ones that make up this deafening quiet, that hypnotize bush-goers. This quiet may be the drug that catalyzes a lifelong addiction to this wild. When wielded correctly, it is the weapon that will win us the war against the destruction of Africa’s wild spaces.

She welcomes me. She says, “no need to want this world to be yours. It is already yours. You are of me. Every being is of me.” She speaks to me in this warm way, a tone I have yet to experience elsewhere. 

I am cradled in the Mother’s bosom when I am with my family, at home. 

My parents tell some story of how, at some young age, my second or third time back on safari before my second or third year alive, I looked out some big glass window of some big luxury safari lodge, into the eyes of a baboon. I put my hand up to the glass. And she put up hers. I could lie and tell you that I know exactly how it all happened and who put whose hand up first; I could try and calculate which circumstance would illicit a more wondrous response from you, reader, but I don’t remember whose hand was up first. 

But maybe my heart remembers. Maybe the fire in my belly, the voice I see in the eyes of the hungry lioness and the sunrise I hear in the greeting, 

“Avuxeni”

Maybe these are my rememberings.

I read, in a book* written by a business-sort-of-friend-of-my-parents, you know the kind, I read, “No wild animal has ever participated in a should.” And it runs my life. As I try to unlearn and de-program and shed what no longer serves me (see 03. Trying to Turn Minimalist(ish)), I find myself returning to this line from this book. I find myself constantly just trying to not should myself. 

You know that scene from Mean Girls where Lindsey Lohan’s character imagines the mall food court to be a watering hole full of wild animals, interacting with one another the way animals interact with one another? Without fear of judgement? Simply with intuitive movement and true aggression and integrity of character?  I oftentimes think of lions when I witness large groups of people together. Or, more accurately, when I watch people try to outdo one another in a public setting. 

(Admittedly, this is not my sole point of intersection with Cady Heron, as I too have faced a few iterations of, “so……. if you’re from Africa……. why are you white?”)

When two women sit across from one another in a mansion overlooking the city, and trade stories of where they’ve been this summer and on which yachts exactly and to which Nobu precisely and with which celebrity specifically and oh yes, that Chanel store; they both know it well, obviously. 

At a carcass with no elbow room to spare, a lion will lose its spot at the table because he lifted his head to show his teeth. He will sacrifice food for a shot at the last word. It seems, from the human perspective, he will risk going hungry just to hear himself snarl the loudest. 

This is the side of lions that I hate to utter aloud because it grants a sort of appropriateness, a legitimacy to human greed. Human bravado. Human boastfulness. I hate to think these traits have their place in the natural world. But they very much do. 

xx

Until You Know Better

IDK maybe just don’t go to the zoo

Great Artists Steal

*Read The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life by Boyd Varty. — while you’re at it, follow @londolozi on instagram — see the wild world through the eyes of people who have, through many years, cultivated a deeply integrated connection with Her.

Read Untamed by Glennon Doyle — changed my life, a sort of sacred text to me

Read Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. — myths and stories that bridge the gap between my heart and my head