Overseas travel

Overseas Travel

For February 2013 Werner from Musicisthelanguage (Check out his website) in conjunction with Goethe Institutes in Africa did organise a four weeks Africa Tour. Well talking about something different! Memories of travels in Central America as a late teenager came to mind. I did not have to wait till Africa. Injected with an antidote against anything going I found myself in Paris travelling by bus from airport to airport. Clochards that live at the airport and on transfer seeing plastic villages along the motorway, made me realise that the third world conditions have arrived in Europe.  Over Casablanca the route went to West Africa. We went to Togo, Benin, Guinea and Ivory Coast. No time for culture shock we went straight into workshops and shows.  The ability to improvise and work around given circumstances was essential. The children reacted amazingly to the shows with music and participation being built in. The whole journey was simply dazzling from the fruit bats leaving their downtown trees to the bullet holes from recent civil wars, bartering in markets and enthusiastic young students keen to talk and exchange ideas, it was an avalanche of impressions, smells and sounds. Yes Africa is unique and amazing, scary and exhilarating and it puts yourself into a very different perspective.  The return flight to Wellington took 40 hours glad to be home too.