Perspective

“I’ve been threatened, held at gunpoint and locked in prison three times,” Angus says matter-of-factly and with a shrug, not a trace of irony in his lilting voice. The sole remaining Associated Press reporter in Zimbabwe, Angus has a weathered look and trace of experience in his voice that only lingers in a handful of the news industry’s “good ol’ boys,” an elite society that dwindles by the year, replete with the kind of reporters who ought to be decked out in a tweed suit with leather elbow patches, sitting in a library downing glasses of scotch on the rocks and smoking a stogie with the other hand. When I found out what he did, I couldn’t help but pepper him with questions on what it’s like to be a journalist in a country ridden with such political turmoil, fascination mixing with my ghoulish curiosity.

“We only had 10 peaceful years in my lifetime there, from 1987 to 1997,” he continues.

“But didn’t you ever think about leaving?” I ask.

“No, not really. Many people do. I could be happy other places in the world, sure, if I could afford to live there, but where would I go? Zimbabwe is my home.”

The thing is when you travel as much as I do, if you take advantage of it to the fullest, meeting everyone you can, talking up every Tom, Dick and Mary who cross your path, the world quickly becomes a very small place. I’d say it would be pretty hard to find any person—celebrity, political figure, everyday civilian—with whom I didn’t share a mere degree or two of separation.

Case in point: Both Angus and Heidi, the owner of the guesthouse in Johannesburg where I stayed for a very short 24 hours, were intimately acquainted with Robert Mugabe. Yes, that Mugabe: The one who bears the blood of thousands of Africans on his hands, the one responsible for plummeting Zimbabwe into financial crisis, the ticking time bomb who may have been a freedom fighter at one point but has strayed far from his roots (read: went crazy in the head). In fact, Heidi, an established African author, has even penned a book about her experiences with him, a book that is displayed amid the walls of photos of her and a more notable hero, Nelson Mandela. That would be comparable to if I were to, say, nonchalantly have scrapbooks filled with pictures of my many dinners with JFK before his assassination, interspersed with a snapshot of Hitler and me having cocktails here and there; it’s just beyond my realm of comprehension.

Still, Heidi wasn’t so much into chitchat, as she flitted about the inn, making sure all her guests had full bellies and a companion with whom to chat; if she’d held still long enough, she would have been subjected to answer my firing squad of questions. But I couldn’t get enough of talking to Angus, who was easily in the second half of his 50’s. He’d been with the AP for 28 years, doesn’t know a life beyond this identity. He spent three months in Rwanda during the height of the genocide, was by Mandela’s side during his campaign for presidency, had been in Somalia and the Congo during the height of turbulent times for both countries. But alas, our conversation was cut all too short, as he was in town for a reason, filling the shoes of his fellow AP reporter in Jo’burg who was on leave for a while, and had to get to the office.

*****

With a loss for anything else to do before my flight to Rwanda, I opted to tag along with one of the other guests, a lovely British lass named Amanda who works finance in Birmingham, to the Apartheid Museum. We’d both been told on numerous occasions to never venture out into Jo’burg alone (even in daylight), but assumed there was safety in numbers—and having a trusted driver recommended by our host. After all, while the majority of people I talked to—natives included—said to get in and out of the city as fast as humanly possible, I’d heard if you did one thing during your time there, the museum was it.

And they did not lie. I spent three hours fully immersed in the heroics that was Nelson Mandela’s life, before glancing at my watch and realizing our driver was going to be there to fetch us in just 10 minutes. Neither of us had made it to any of the other 17 or so exhibits during our time there, all of which will be left to another day, I’m afraid to say.

*****

It’s people like Angus who made me want to get into journalism in the first place; it’s icons like Nelson Mandela who make me question my fluffy career as a travel writer. Far before there was scuba diving and five-star resorts and fancy meals and bungee jumping off towers, there was a burning interest in humanitarian issues that spanned the globe, hence the desire to see it all in the first place, to gain first-hand perspective not offered in any textbook or magazine. When I was but a spry college student with dreams that stretched from the North Pole all the way down to Antarctica, I had this morbid curiosity about human trafficking in the Balkans and this strong aspiration to someday move there and expose the cold, hard facts. As I became immersed in my studies and, eventually, career a bit more, I thought maybe one day I would steer myself more toward the NGO side of journalism. It’s yet to happen, but that doesn’t mean I won’t someday find my way back. It’s hard to encounter people like Angus and Mandela and not be inspired to do something better, something more meaningful, than the path that currently stretches ahead of you.