The spiritual album

Akiko*, a Kruger National Park guide, parked by the buffalo thorn tree and then he gave my family and I a glimpse of nature’s creative spirit. That tree, with its paired thorns – one hooked and one strait – offers the Cape buffalo a protective element against predators. The paired thorns shield the buffalo by allowing the hunted to face the hunter. And there are times in history where having that protection may have allowed previous generations to experience Africa through their own senses and not the colonial narrative of a divided continent; a constrained view through a container without any windows.

Before he resumed the drive inside the park, he invited us to think of the act of traveling as a spiritual album, one connecting our senses to the world. One connecting humans to moments that make us whole. Listening to him made me think of one key leadership attribute: curiosity. The latter is ignited and maintained by nurturing our inner child. At times, it can be suppressed through adulting but it is in us. As adults, we ought to keep that curiosity alive while helping our children to nurture, engage and embrace their curiosity as a compass. Unlike previous generations, we are in a container with windows. Thus, able to fully immerse ourselves into Africa.

For us, curating experiences which capture the essence of all the senses is what we set to do over our family’s summer break in the South African winter. What the eyes see cannot be unseen. What the nose smells evokes memories and creates new pathways in the brain. What the ear engages with through meaningful conversations connects minds. Moreover, the hyena’s whoop or the leopard’s sawing are distinct calls which may evoke fear or curiosity of what may emerge from the bush. It is, at times, a code written from our lived experiences which opens or closes our minds and senses to the world.

When I parked at the rental station to turn in our car, the odometer had registered two thousand four hundred and ten kilometers from the Western Cape to Mpumalanga. Our journey gave us access to the beauty of the country. I could not help but think of former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s speech I am an African delivered on May 8, 1996, on the occasion of the adoption of South Africa’s new constitution. His words taught my younger mind about embracing an African identity rooted in shared history and common destiny. From a South African history woven in the Khoi and the San, the Malay slaves, the European migrants and us, the people of the rest of the African continent.

I thought about the road traveled, and the memories my family created. Baked in the shared experience is the invisible bond. Reminiscing 20 years from now we’ll recall what made us laugh, the delicious food we ate together as well as the fear we felt part-way through our drive; when a sidewind pushed our van, my daughter and I locked eyes through the rearview mirror. I had heard of the impact of tailwinds and headwinds, but in that moment, when the wind made the car tilt right, steady hand and a racing heart provided relief when the van steadied again. This feeling of vulnerability that caught my daughter’s eyes, and mine became a visual memory of shared fear. But we overcame it, united in fear and hope for safety.

This experience reminds me that there are moments in our leadership journey when doubt creeps in uncontrollably. In these moments, it is our responsibility to focus on the skills we have, the muscle memory and faith. In that moment in the car, I drew strength from the shared experience of fear and responsibility I had over the lives in the vehicle, including mine. When we planned the route, we did not plan for wind as the road was designed by engineers who believed this was the most reliable and efficient road. As in leadership, we follow the roadmap while making adjustments throughout in order to reach the destination. For us, our destination was Hazyview, Mpumalanga, and when the sidewind caught us, we were only halfway there.

We can anticipate headwinds may slow us down and tailwinds can propel us, yet the unexpected sidewinds prompt us to rethink what we thought we knew. These are the moments in life where the unexpected creates a window to react or to engage. This was not a part of the plan. And this is the reality of life. Things happen and the power is in how we engage with situations. This is what we set out to do: give our children an opportunity to feel with their senses the unexpected, the beauty, the challenging, and the unknown by exploring one of the countries they call home.

As parents of young adults, we are on the ongoing journey of transmission. Giving a mission to the next generation. And co-creating the legacy so when time comes, we no longer think about what it could have been. Simply because, curiosity connected one generation to the next.

For Akiko, storytelling was about the power of curiosity connected to the past. In this new dispensation, how do we focus our energy on the creative value of traveling? We ought to acknowledge the past while recognizing the context of this past. We cannot rewrite it for what was sensed to be erased. We can learn and understand by making context a powerful companion of curiosity.

My family and I set out to discover a country we read about and understood from the perspective of others‘ lived experience. Then we went to see it for ourselves. Throughout the 2,410 kilometers, we tasted the power of curiosity in its etymological sense; care and inquisitiveness. Such is the premise of the spiritual album.