Africa used to be my wildest dream. What does it represent to me now, after few years since the dream came true? Well, at least Africa is still on my mind, every single day. It is not a dream anymore, but a memory. An exciting and interesting memory that gets me on a good mood every time I think of the experience. A memory that keeps surprising me day after day; the more time goes by, the deeper the learned lessons get. Most importantly, a memory that proves to me that anything is possible and I am brave and persistent enough to make any dream come true.
Have I changed? Definitely yes.
I have learned to tell the difference between what I really need and what I just want. Spending time around people who own so little made me realise how much less actually is enough. What also helped me to open my eyes was my backbag. If I was able to do well for three months with just the amount of stuff that fit in a backbag - and even there was some unnesessary items - most of the items I have in my appartment must be just crap.
I never used to be one of the drama queens who find every little delay annoying, but after spending three months in Africa, a train that is 5 minutes late, is a train on time in my opinion. In principle there's nothing wrong with being efficient, but when the demand of efficiency starts to make people impatient and to stress over things that are insignificant, there definitely is something wrong with our europian efficiency as it doesn't make our quality of life better anymore. On the contrary, we become more and more stressed and we lose the ability to enjoy little "empty" moments. If we use all our energy on freaking out since the bus is late, when do we have time to listen to the birds sing or to throw a friendly smile to a passer-by?
I must have been quite broad-minded already before the time I spent in Africa (a narrow-minded person wouldn't travel to rural areas in Africa to volunteer there, I guess) but my capability to accept different ways of living in different cultures has grown to new level. Yes, there are many things in African culture that is very hard to swallow for a europian, but who am I to judge their way of living? On the other hand, the Africans don't approve all the characteristics in western culture. At the end there are just people looking at other peoples different cultures from their own perspective, who should minimize the use of words "wrong" and "right" and try to use more "different" and "interesting" or even "difficult to understand".
