The day I was supposed to leave for Cape Town, my sister and I anxiously packed my suitcases on the floor of my living room in Birmingham, Alabama. Our historic home, ever charming in its 1920s splendor, shielded the waning summer heat as the cool floorboards nearly sighed in frustration at my pacing. I dumped an enormous pile of clothes onto the couch, and she held the pieces up one by one as I decided whether they would make the journey with me. Her Seasick Records sweatshirt we’ve shared custody of for the past five years like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? “Going.” She grumbled and tossed it into my open suitcase. Five pairs of black leggings? “Definitely going.” She heaped them into the suitcase. Sundresses, frilly shirts, and going out tops? “Staying,” I declared as she chucked them back into the hamper. With little context about what the program would entail, I began to make assumptions about what the experience would be like… rugged, outdoors, and fully immersive.
I lifted my suitcases into the trunk of my mom’s car, gave our precious Boston Terrier some pets, and waved goodbye to my childhood home. The drive to the airport was only fifteen minutes, and the sun turned bright pink Birmingham’s skyline as we turned onto Messer Airport Highway. My dad met us at the airport, something he’s never done in my years of traveling back and forth to Washington, D.C., so I knew this journey carried emotional stakes for my parents. None of my immediate family members have ever traveled out of the United States, let alone to a place as distant and dissimilar as South Africa. Indeed, only barely did I received my passport in time for my flight, thanks to an 8am agency appointment the morning after Election Day.
We waited in line at the American Airlines counter while the agent patiently explained to an older woman that because her flight to Dallas was delayed and she would miss her connection, she would need to wait until flights resumed the following day to depart. She stormed off towards the parking deck and I stepped forward, eagerly presenting my brand new passport. The agent took my bags and printed my boarding pass. He made me swear I would not leave the Doha airport because I did not have a visa, and I obliged. After hugging my family goodbye, I jumped in the remarkably short security line. The gate agent’s words didn’t fully register for me until I checked the Qatar app only to discover that, in fact, my first leg was also the last flight to Dallas and I wouldn’t make the next two Qatar legs. I rushed back to the counter, pleading with him to fetch my bags before they were loaded onboard. He directed me downstairs, where a very stern claims officer found my bags on the tarmac. She brought them back to me in a huff, handing over my boarding pass. “I’m sorry, it looks like you were going somewhere fun.”
In the couple of days following Election Day, I carefully made my rounds to thank the many friends and colleagues that contributed to our jaw-dropping victory. In fact, the only real reason I chose South Africa as my destination was that it granted me the ability to stay in Birmingham through Election Day — a maneuver many called extreme, but I would call necessary. The opportunity to stay in Birmingham for another day gave me the chance to see Daniel, our campaign manager, and glean from his sage advice on world travels. I regaled him of my romantic challenges with someone we both knew, and in true Daniel fashion, he exclaimed, “Y’all were seeing each other?!” We laughed. He told me of a college summer spent at a hostel in France, practicing French and falling in love with locals. He encouraged me to watch the movie “Before Sunrise” — extended journeys abroad like these were about embracing the impermanence of time and place, he said, and learning to make the most of it anyways. Later that night, with nothing to do but browse Netflix for entertainment, I couldn’t bring myself to queue Before Sunrise. I could sense the depth of my sadness at the thought of closing that campaign chapter so soon — it would break my heart. Later, I discovered it was mutual.
I was remarkably frustrated that my journey to Cape Town met yet another delay. But I gladly accepted the extra time at home to review the haphazard contents of my suitcases and snuggle with our dog one last time. I forced Qatar to change my first leg to Miami, confident that would avoid the severe weather system moving across the Southeast. Sure enough, twenty-four hours later, I was off. The rest of the journey was painfully long and honestly kind of a blur. On the first flight over the Atlantic, there was no wifi, so I listened to the same ten-song playlist on repeat and read text threads with loved ones. I found a message from an old friend quoting James Clear:
“Nobody accomplishes anything significant alone. But nobody accomplishes anything significant by accident either. Just because you need others doesn’t mean you can wait for others to make it happen. You have to act as if you are a force of nature and try to bend the universe in your desired direction — while remaining pleasant and open to help along the way.” Thought you might like that. You are a force of nature.
There was so much anxiety and excitement bubbling up inside that I did not sleep at all. I did not feel like a force of nature; on this tiny tube way up in the sky, I felt very, very small. I listened to a little bit of Just Mercy, which I stole from Daniel’s bookshelf just before Election Day. On the flight from Doha to Cape Town, I sat in a middle seat next to a very tall, very broad, very handsome South African yacht hand. He was coming home for his one month down before another three months up in the Mediterranean Sea. His elbows barely fit inside the two armrests despite well-known middle seat privileges. So, we made a deal that he could have both armrests if I could sleep on his shoulder. Bleary-eyed and thoroughly dazed, I arrived in sunny Cape Town around thirty-six hours after leaving Birmingham.
Stepping off the plane, the thorough disorientation hit me. Opposite seasons, opposite driving patterns, foreign languages and currency and cultures. Everyone I interacted with had an accent. The landscape looked completely foreign, with tall sandstone mountains covered in light chaparral. Not only did South Africans drive on the left side of the road, but the kinds of cars they drove were different, too. When I left for South Africa, I expected it to be a (very removed) extension of home. Little did I know, there would be nearly nothing familiar to latch onto. Tabisa, our Program Coordinator, and Nkosana, our driver, picked me up from the airport. They loaded my bags into the back of our minibus taxi and we took off down the N2 into town.
The taxi was in a state of disrepair — the windows rattled as we drove, the seatbelts did not work at all, and the exterior bore paint from collisions with other vehicles. Yet it was immediately clear that the taxi was Nkosana’s livelihood as he chatted about driving learners to school each day in his neighborhood. Surprisingly, the route the N2 takes from Cape Town International Airport into town highlights many of the core elements of South African life. Deeply impoverished informal settlements alongside generational wealth. The Athlone Refuse Transfer Station, where recycling is diverted from landfills. Lush greenery along the exit to Raapenberg Road. A tight left up to Klipfontein, curving around the Rondebosch Common’s tall grasses and winding through the tight streets of Rondebosch lined with private schools and sports clubs. Turning just before crossing the Lisbeek River until we arrived at the two-story learning center atop Cape Letting.
Stewart introduced himself to me. I tried to call him “Professor Chirova,” but he waved it away. “Everyone calls me Stewart.” Tabisa asked each of the students to introduce themselves to me, and they took turns doing so. I turned to ask Stewart logistical questions, instead he whispered sage advice, “We’ll get to that. What’s important is you catch up with them.” It was midday, just in time for lunch, so I set off on foot with Mila and Mamy to find food. Over the bridge and across Main Road, they led me to tiny braai spot called Papa Ron’s Shishanyama. To get there, we had to cross the road, and I was shocked when they stepped out right in front of moving cars. Mila explained that pedestrians do not have the right of way in South Africa, and you should cross whenever the opportunity arises. Mila and Mamy split a braai platter as we sat outside, the beautiful sun cut by clouds bringing slight pallor. They told me about their lives in the U.S., and Mila discussed her summer spent working at a nonprofit organization in Khayelitsha.
We returned to the classroom, where another lecture began. The thoroughness of the exhaustion hit me, so I excused myself to the small sleeping room and fell into REM until it was time for Nkosana to deliver me to my Langa host family. We dropped each person in our cohort off first, one by one at their homes. They called to each otehr as they left, “Sobonana!” The phrase was foreign again and the exchange felt ritualistic, the early days of a small group of Americans tightly bonded by this shared experience. I felt, immediately, that no one else would remember this time or this place when we returned home but us — we’ll always be connected by remember-whens.
Mama excitedly greeted me. She immediately bestowed my Xhosa name — Lindiwe, meaning ‘the awaited one.’ We carried my bags inside the house and she showed me to my room. Much smaller than I was used to, the little bedroom faced the front of the house furnished with a twin bed, a nightstand, and a closet completely full of linens. By the time you added my luggage to the collection, there was barely room for me. I spent the summer awash in comfort, my challenges both familiar and conquerable. This seemed more existential. Mama gave me dinner as we settled in the living room. In Cape Town, it was much colder still than I expected, so I dressed in the only set of sweats I packed and huddled in front of the small space heater. I went to bed early that night, comatose after the long journey, wrapping myself like a burrito in the duvet to stay warm.
Lily Myrick
Fall 2025
SIT - Multiculturalism and Human Rights in South Africa
Columbian College of Arts and Science
Political Science Major