One Night Communion

Manon pours a bottle of Kilimanjaro Beer into a tall glass. I sip a delicate serving of Tej, a champagne-colored honey wine, that the waiter claims is his favorite beverage. For a while, we go through the formal ‘first date-like’ motions of getting to know each other, descriptions of family, of friends, studies and work and interests. I explain to Manon my anthropology-based program in Cape Town, she tells me about the volunteer organization that sent her to Arusha. But eventually it dawns on both of us that it doesn’t really matter at this point that we construct our whole personas for one another. This night is the first and last time we’ll know each other; it hardly matters that at home I pass the time watching old movies of Cary Grant, and she follows Dubstep music, and we both played ‘Olivia’ in Twelfth Night. We have sought one another’s company for communion over the things we share that no one in our lives may fully understand, the fluctuating dimensions of self that exist right now within and because of Africa. Thus our departure from normal social routine is signified when I ask Manon whether she looks forward to returning home, and she announces:

“Switzerland is sometimes barbaric. I see that now, in its conformity. I don’t know how I feel about going back. Home is just the end-point, it is inevitable. I want to see friends, but I’m afraid that I’ll sink back into it, and forget. I know I will.”

Barbaric. I think Manon may be the first person in history to call Switzerland this. Barbaric in its conformity. If I am correct in interpreting, she speaks of the inhumanity, the lack of humanness in the daily experience. The technology, the segregating and alienating systems that render face-to-face contact unnecessary. If this is what she means by ‘barbaric,’ then I understand her ambivalence towards returning.

“Forgetting terrifies me too,” I admit. “But when we go back, no matter how much we adjust to our own culture, and how many of the details we lose, it will never be like we’d never gone. Even if you forget the meaning of ‘Jambo,’ you will know that Africa is not really what politicians and newspapers say it is. And the people you met. . . you’ll always know they are real.”

The evening passes as Manon and I replenish ourselves through social communion. Exhausted and satiated, we return to Jambo Inn and bid our final farewell. We part, knowing we’ll never see each other again, though content to have had the chance to share our lone experiences.

Manon

“Hello, are you traveling alone?” A Caucasian girl approaches me as I sit for curry at the Jambo Inn restaurant.

            “Yes, for now. How about you?” The girl nods, looking lonely, so I invite her to eat.

            “Thank you,” she responds with a very slight European accent.

Her name is Manon, hailing from Switzerland. She has traveled alone for the first time, to spend three months on a volunteer program in Arusha. The girl has the kind of unassuming attractiveness that is usually passed off as ‘cute’ or ‘pleasant.’ Her features are carefully composed with a straight upturned nose and a faintly mouse-like overbite. With fine, fawn-colored hair, and flawless skin, her beauty is one of Caucasian softness, but would call for a certain temper of ‘joie de vivre’ to really catch fire.

“I’ve been here for three days, and there’s nothing to do in Dar es Salaam but walk around,” Manon vents after we’d exchanged pleasantries. “I was getting so lonely. And everyone here is on honeymoon, or strange business. I’m so glad to talk to you, I use to never talk to strangers. I think Africa has made me braver that way.”

Now at the end of her time in Tanzania, Manon has changed. I couldn’t know how much has internally altered, but I could recognize the outward statements of a transformed identity. She is wearing an orange kanga print dress, handmade on streets of Arusha. The sleeves are thick, just off the shoulders, with a scoop-neck, and fitted upper torso. Her sandals hail from the street markets also, and her wispy mouse-colored hair is pulled tight into tiny braids. She doesn’t look ridiculous, as one might imagine, but genuinely believes that these changes in style make sense here. Like all of fashion, her clothes are a sign. Whether they represent practicality, an inner change, or the greatest self-delusion of having become local, is up for debate.

Before standing to take an afternoon nap, Manon invites me to dinner in a different part of the city. I agree, pleased for the company.

For someone who claims former shyness, Manon seems quite forward. Traveling has a way of accentuating the necessities of life, companionship being an oft forgotten need. It also has a way speeding up relationships, into condensed chunks of pivotal exchanges. I wonder how Africa has made Manon braver; how like Oz, visitors historically find in this ‘mystery continent’ whatever qualities they seek.