Hey, Obruni

"For the people in this village, life is hard, but beautiful, too. I've said before that travel changes you. It changes the meanings of words you took for granted. Words like community, because, here, without community there is no survival, and no life. Words like Africa, because once you've been here, these images are no longer flickering lights on a screen, something you've seen between channels. This is the real world."

                               Anthony Bourdain while visiting Larabanga, Ghana



"Hey Obruni, what are you doing?", the voice called out to me. I instantly tightened and felt apologetic, as if I had to explain myself.

It was my first big trip alone. I had not yet found my sea legs, and I was a little nervous. My surroundings were still unfamiliar, and I felt like an intruder. To make me feel even more vulnerable I was laying on my belly taking the above picture when the voice called out. Suddenly I felt very scared.

I have come to know that the fear that I felt in that moment was a learned response. In that instant I understood that I had been conditioned to fear other people. Strangers are bad. While I don't  mean to make light of the subject matter, when I was shown this film while I was in grade one, it did scare the piss out of me, and thank god that no stranger ever attacked and murdered me, but this film is one of many teachings that led me down a path to a mentality that strangers should be feared.

I know that a lot of us were subjected to this conditioning, and the fear that was instilled in me is not mine alone.

Turned out the dude on that backroad in Ghana was a nice guy.

Subsequent experiences have taught me that this world is overwhelmingly filled with incredibly kind and generous human beings, its just kind of sad that initial experiences failed to teach me that, that mistrusting my fellow human beings was something I was conditioned to do, something I had to overcome.

http://www.goyestoeverything.com