As my seasonal work in Alaska was coming to an end one summer, I felt a strong urge to go to Africa. A travel partner and I bought one-way tickets to Nairobi, Kenya, where we’d begin an arduous journey through the southeast region of the continent. I can’t remember what exactly motivated this particular trip, but I’m confident the dream arose as all dreams do, to teach me something deep and soulful.
The three months I spent travelling across Africa taught me a lot about the power of my meditation practice. Through this journey, I learned to stay calm in the presence of difficulties and to appreciate the moments of magic that were always destined to appear thereafter.
We chose not to take a tour or join one of the overland buses traveling through the country, like most young travellers do; we wanted to see Africa from the locals’ perspective. To get an honest and real look at the parts of the continent we’d travel through, we took public transportation as much as possible.
In my twenties, I prided myself on not being a tourist. I preferred calling myself a traveller, less focused on the sites I wanted to check off my list and more interested in being open to whatever the journey showed me. I wanted to travel through the continent in as unprivileged a way as a privileged young woman could. As uncomfortable as this trip might prove to be, I wanted to step away from my industrialized country convenience and really experience something wildly different.
We didn’t have fixed plans regarding where we would go or how long it would take us to get there, but I knew I’d like to end this trip in Cape Town, South Africa, and fly home from there. Logistically, this would be the best place from which to get a flight home. It would also offer me the posh hotel room and chilled glass of wine I felt I’d deserve when I finally made it to the finish line of such a grand adventure.
Upon arrival in Nairobi, I already knew I was well out of my comfort zone. As we drove from the airport to our dilapidated hotel room, my eyes were glued to the dry, dusty landscapes we passed through and the people sitting alongside the road simply trying to survive.
Skinny children walked beside the rusty old Toyota Corolla taxi we were in, banging on the window to get our attention, selling everything from hangers to cell phone chargers. My taxi driver—whom I could clearly tell was sick by the way his skin sunk into his deep and dark eye sockets—told us stories of how hard life was for him, stories of constant misfortunes.
From our first moments on the continent, the message was clear: life indeed was full of suffering. Many of the people we met along the way had incredibly challenging lives, amplified by colonization and class inequalities. When it came to struggles, I realized I had very few.
Dealing with discomfort
We took the bus from Kenya to Tanzania before jumping on a train headed south to Zambia. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, until we were stopped quite literally on our train tracks on the southern border of Tanzania. We were surprised to hear that all public transportation bound south toward Zambia was unavailable, as the government had reallocated most of the buses, trains and ferryboats to bring fleeing Congolese refugees away from their war-torn country and into Tanzania.
Of course, I was grateful that the Tanzanian government was helping the displaced and struggling Congolese refugees, but as a traveller, I found myself stuck at the end of a dead-end road. Along this trip, my travel partner and I found ourselves running into one roadblock after another. After contemplating our choices and talking to many locals about where to go next, we ended up sharing a 12-seater minivan taxi with 24 other passengers crammed inside. It was a long, hot and uncomfortable car ride through the country.
On the way, we saw thousands of simple wooden caskets for sale along the roadside. The caskets were much too small for an average adult; they were for children. We drove past a fatal vehicle accident, bodies lying limp and lifeless on the grass beside the wreckage. I’ll never forget what I saw on that drive through Zambia. The reality of the suffering surrounding us was undeniable.
Exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed upon arrival in the capital city, we made it to our simple hostel beds just as sweat began pouring out of my body. My temperature quickly fluctuated between freezing cold and burning hot. Now it seemed I had contracted malaria and was fully engrossed in my own sufferings.
As I rolled from side to side in agony on the hard mattress, all I wanted to do was to return to the comfort of the past, my home back in America. Initially, I had wanted to take this trip to see what life was like in East Africa, but when the discomfort arose, my impulse was to push it all away.
Tough but rewarding
A few days later, we were once again ready to continue on; we were diligent about reaching the finish line no matter how challenging the journey to get there proved to be. I must admit, while this expedition was by far the toughest I had ever experienced as a modern-day explorer—or at least that’s what I liked to call myself—there was always a magical reward that came after each of the hardships we encountered.
That is exactly what the journey of meditation is like also: tough but rewarding. It requires diligence and determination. It isn’t always easy, but it’s a powerful tool for dealing with the struggles that are so intrinsically a part of human existence for all of us.
While most of the people surrounding me were dealing with horrific tragedies, such as hunger, war, poverty and disease, my struggles lived in the workings of my mind: depression and anxiety. As minor as my difficulties might have seemed in comparison, through the miles of that long trip, I learned a lot about being with my hardships rather than constantly pushing them away or trying to get away from them. I learned to be with what was, even if it wasn’t what I wanted.
Along the 5,000-mile (about 8, 047 kilometres) journey, we stopped and swam in rock pools above the impressive Victoria Falls, a magical place where a thick 800-metre blanket of water tumbles over a wide wall of earth, seemingly stretching as far as the eye can see. In Namibia, we hiked up the largest sand dunes in the world and looked out over expansive desert lands containing more skeletons than living animals.
In South Africa, we camped in countless national parklands, enjoying a glass of chilled wine at the end of the day and falling asleep to the cackling of wild hyenas and the loud foot poundings of zebras running in the distance. The most memorable moments of the trip for me were the vibrant drum and dance parties celebrating weddings and the birth of children in the smallest of towns with names I can’t remember.
In one small village in Zambia, we were invited to the local orphanage, where nearly 50 children ran up to us and followed us around for the day. Just before we left, a few of the older children asked us to dance with them. We agreed, and immediately one of the nuns pulled a few rustic hand drums from the corner of the room.
A beautiful four-year-old girl adorned in a sweet white dress caught my eye as she shyly walked to the center of the room. She started to move her hips from side to side as quickly as her skinny 10-year-old brother could bang the drum. They laughed, smiled, danced and drummed with immense excitement. They were having so much fun. When one of the little boys grabbed my hand and pulled me into the dance circle, I excitedly joined in.
The journey, in Africa as well as in meditation, is not to focus on the suffering; it’s to make sure the suffering isn’t keeping you from dancing when the opportunities arise. Many of us want to learn to meditate to eliminate our struggles, but meditation doesn’t get rid of our struggles. It teaches us to be with ourselves and whatever arises—the good, the bad, the uncomfortable—and simply observe these moments as they pass.
Diligence, patience and persistence
I have travelled to more than 50 countries, and this trip was the most challenging, as well as the most rewarding journey I’ve ever taken. I can now tell you that the success of the undertaking came about because I learned to let the struggles happen without freaking out and to keep moving whenever the timing felt right. Looking back on it now, I see that this was possible only because of the diligence, patience and persistence I learned through meditation in years past in India.
Perhaps my soul sent me on this journey to show me how to accept not only the suffering in myself but the suffering of the entire world as a natural element of our humanness.
My travel partner, who was also an avid meditator, and I were resilient when it came to focusing on the now and moving forward from that place. Perhaps my soul sent me on this journey to show me how to accept not only the suffering in myself but the suffering of the entire world as a natural element of our humanness—to learn to be at peace with it.
The Buddha’s first noble truth is “Life is suffering.” His life purpose thereafter was to teach meditation as a tool for dealing with the inevitable suffering. I reminded myself of this many times during my adventure through Africa. There will be hardships; keep meditating.
Over the course of our adventure, we focused on the baby steps we needed to take each day, not on the overwhelming uncertainties that lay ahead of us. Our mindful presence made it possible to keep going. We were diligent about getting on the next train, bus or shared taxi that would continue bringing us closer to Cape Town. When we practice meditation with the same diligence, we come to the peaceful place we so deeply desire.
Three months later and 30 pounds lighter, we finally did arrive in the beautiful coastal city of Cape Town. It felt like a miracle in many ways. You can be sure that I had plenty of chilled glasses of wine at trendy, posh seaside restaurants. We watched the golden sunset colours illuminating the iconic Table Mountain in the evenings and walked in the cold, raw air along the Atlantic Ocean in the mornings.
The feelings that came over me at the end of the trip reminded me of the day when I left my first meditation retreat. I had the same satisfied feeling of accomplishment and momentary bliss as I had holding on to the back of the truck in India.
In Africa, I learned how to deal with suffering in an honest and peaceful way. Meditation in many ways feels like a hero’s journey. It’s so much easier to stick to your habitual routines and not make the time or commitment to meditate, but I want to assure you that life will become so much calmer when you do. You learn to be with your suffering and still dance.
Meditation: A self-created superpower
Oftentimes the journey, especially in the beginning, feels too difficult, and the benefits seem distant and hard to imagine. I believe new meditators have the misconception that they’ll have fewer thoughts or struggles when they learn how to meditate, which isn’t true.
In fact, initially, it feels like you have more thoughts, because suddenly you can see them all. Meditation simply teaches us not to react to them. In this way meditation indirectly brings more happiness into our lives, because we learn to get ourselves unstuck from the pain and suffering as they arise.
Meditation offers a sort of self-created superpower for staying calm and becoming less reactionary when the going gets rough. To do the unthinkable, you must retrain the way you think.
During my first meditation retreat in India, the head teacher, S. N. Goenka, would tell us, “You must work patiently, persistently and continuously. Continuity of practice is the secret of success.” He was right. There is only one way to practice meditation: patiently, persistently and continuously. Similarly, that was exactly how I’d get through Africa.
I repeated this quote many times throughout my African journey. I also keep this quote tacked to my wall at home. If you practice meditation patiently, persistently and continuously, there truly are no limits to what you can accomplish and the benefits you can receive. So practice as if your life depends on it, because your soul life actually does!
Kori Hahn is the author of Rituals of the Soul and founder of a community gathering place called the Santosha Society, which is dedicated to travel, surfing and the soulful. She hosts numerous trips around the world for hundreds of women who study Ayurveda, Yoga, meditation and all things related to soul growth, knowledge and fulfillment. Visit her online at http://www.SantoshaSociety.com.
Excerpted from the book Rituals of the Soul. Copyright ©2021 by Kori Hahn. Printed with permission from New World Library—www.newworldlibrary.com.
image 1: Pixabay; image 2: Wikimedia Commons; image 3: Wikimedia Commons
