Leaving the Girlfriend Behind

At first it was difficult being away from my girlfriend because I missed her too much, but after a few weeks it became difficult for other reasons.

On my way back to Accra from the waterfall she called upset because I had not been in ample contact. We’d been texting often enough but she wanted voice contact – contact that could still be somewhat intimate.

Her request is fair enough, but from her end of the phone it is arguably easier. She has the same work and routine, creature comforts and security, whilst for me I was too busy remembering to take my iron and malaria tablets*, organise bus tickets and onward flights and visas, know where my valuables are, not get lost, eat properly, find water I can drink, not get sick, find a bed for the night, find clean toilets (and bring toilet paper in with me), budget my money, speak another language, be polite to beggars, fight off men, respect a culture, have fun (but not out-of-control fun), make friends and stay sane. At this stage of my trip, I was finding it difficult managing my tangible life in Africa and still do justice to my life at home.

My partner and I had been fighting a lot in the time leading up to my departure and through it all I was telling myself that soon I will be in Africa and we can’t fight there and I won’t feel this way anymore, Africa would be my escape. If I were totally honest, in a really petty way, my reasons for going away were probably tinged with revenge. Revenge for all the obligations life inflicts on you: the expectations of partners, family and friends; obligations to work; obligations to call people back; obligations to be on time; having to wait; having to do things you don’t want to do. Being able to quit your job and fly off to the other side of the world is a way of saying ‘fuck this!’ and ‘you cant make me’.

But that phone call and that two hour fight that day turned out to be the reminder I needed: that life at home does go on.

The travellers dream is of disappearing, getting lost in the unknown but that isn’t exactly the reality, especially with today’s technology and especially when you are in a long distance relationship. I guess the lesson for me was that travel isn’t the total escape I’d been craving. I couldn’t escape obligations back home or the people I’d left there, I certainly could not escape myself, my emotions or where my heart was. It turns out all I really did was leave home for a while. I felt like my only choice was to learn to carry-on two lives with a certain balance or give one of them up.

* I took anti-malaria tablets everyday for the first 3 weeks, I was meant to take them everyday for 5 months but I don’t want to take any drug everyday for that long. Malaria tablets are renowned for their negative side effects and is generally pretty nasty stuff and so I made an executive decision not to. It wasn’t an easy decision, especially when I considered the possibility that if I got really sick I had no one to take me to the hospital or even to get me drinkable water.