The constant human activity. The vibe. The international departure screen. The restaurants & bars. The currency exchange offices, the ATM’s. The extreme concentration of nationalities. The constant departures for all corners of the globe.
People cross paths in one place (the airport), they may or may not talk to one another, and then a second after they are taking off for Johannesburg, Frankfurt, Tunis, Bogota, Kuala Lumpur etc. These people will likely never cross paths again.
All this may seem trite / banal to you some, but for me? Well, I live for this. I notice all these things, I think about them, I obsess over it. When I saw Up In The Air with George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, it was like the director and writer of the film, Jason Reitman, reached into the back of my mind and pulled out my wildest fantasy, only to display it in a flawless cinematic experience. Go and watch that film now.
The way George Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham lives in this movie is exactly, 10000% how I aspire to live. It doesn’t get any better than that. I’ve held everyone involved in Up In The Air in the highest esteem ever since I laid eyes on that movie.
To travel is to truly live. Ditch the useless, value-decreasing material cap. Splurge on lifetime memories, and a camera to capture them. A friend of mine always says: “Don’t buy Air Jordans, buy plane tickets.” Amen. Jordan’s are nice though, ha.
I love the atmosphere of places I get there. From the sunny, quiet, oven-like hat of Cancun to the noisy Nairobi. Drastic changes in culture and everything else matter to me in very deep ways.
To be honest it’s a feeling I can’t quite explain. Only someone who has the same yearning for places other than home can understand what it feels like to finally discover those places. I always joke and tell my parents that had they not introduced us to life outside of Cameroon, we would be perfectly fine at home, not worrying about anything else. Because after all, you don’t know what you don’t know. But ever since we left home and discovered the outside, we can never revert back.
The world is so big and so beautiful, I get emotional when I think about it. There are so many sunsets to take in, so many parties to go to, so many experiences to live through, so much food to eat. Will we ever have enough time? Are our aspirations too big? But if you can’t go a day without thinking about something, I want to believe it’s for a reason. I eventually want to know people from everywhere on this planet.
Unfortunately it’s never easy to do something as privileged, as getting to visit other countries and horizons, for all the obvious reasons: money, time, opportunity etc. To be able to pull it off takes a lot of resilience, luck, organization and relentlessness. Some people seem to be prolific when it comes to travelling, and those are the kinds of people I want to meet, so I could pummel them with questions. May you all go out, explore the world and feed your soul.