One of the advantages of sitting almost alone at a nearly empty airport gate when one has arrived early for one’s flight to sit and wait for the time when one can get one’s seat assignment is that it gives one time to sit and ponder. Airports are good locations for sitting and pondering, at least once you have done the marathon hiking that is required of you to get to one’s gate after standing in line and subjecting yourself to the ritual humiliation of patdowns and security scans of yourself and your carry-on bags and personal items. As I was able to enjoy a strawberry smoothie on the drive to the airport thanks to the generosity of the close friend who was driving me to the airport, who was hoping to be able to get to an auto parts store to shop for a neighbor of his whose truck has been having some difficulties, I have perhaps more than usual to be grateful for as I sit and ponder.

This particular airport is the first of five that I will pass through on this particular trip, three of which I have never been to before in countries that I will be seeing for the first time. Whenever I have told people of this trip that I am undertaking to South Africa, the thing that I have consistently been told is to be safe. For a variety of reasons, including high corruption, high crime, and a social system, political system, and infrastructure that to Western eyes are falling apart in front of us, South Africa is not associated with safety. There is a great deal of history in the place, and also some natural beauty, but it does not appear as if the people on the ground at present have been able to maintain such blessings as they received from past generations in large part because of the bitterness that they feel about the wrongs of past generations.

When one travels, one frequently has a set of expectations about the places one will see. In my previous musing while at this same airport, while I was waiting for the flight that would take me to Vancouver, British Columbia, at the beginning of the ambitious journey I took a few months ago with my mother, my thoughts were about the struggle for freedom that so many of the places I would see were engaged in. I did indeed find that, but what I also found was a lot of concern about historical grievances. Over and over again in talking with the local people on the ground in places like Northern Cyprus, or in reading the arguments about Catalan independence, the desire for freedom in the present day was strongly connected with the hurt over past wrongs that made it impossible for people to trust those that sought to rule over them. Catalans with a history of oppression at the hands of the Spanish that goes back some three hundred years or more, with several sustained attempts to wipe out the distinctive Catalan language during that time, cannot trust the central Spanish government that denies their desire for independence is even a legitimate one. Northern Cypriots, with a laid back attitude towards Islam, nevertheless feel passionately that a Cypriot government that attempted genocide on them is unworthy of being accepted under any terms as their national government. These are reasonable problems, even if independence does not bring all that people want from it, and a whole host of other problems that have to be dealt with when the hangover of freedom wears off and one has to work out problems of civil government with one’s neighbors.

My expectations for South Africa are of a more limited nature. Indeed, I am more curious about what is going on than expecting to see anything in particular. I am curious, for example, whether my stop in Libreville, Gabon will be made more tense at all as a result of the recent military coup that took place in the country. I am curious as to the state of the roads in South Africa in the regions I will be seeing, admittedly only a small part of a massive country, and also interested to see how things are going in the small parts of Lesotho and Eswatini that I plan on seeing as well. I am not sure whether I should have more expectations or if my curiosity and concern are the appropriate response to a region that one does not know well and where one is not sure that one is getting accurate information about. I remember one memorable taxi ride where a local Ghanaian in Kumasi was complaining about the United States and, once we found out that the taxi driver had actually lived in the United States and been deported on a drug offense, one of the local ministers of the church I had gone to assist there lectured the driver on his lack of standing in insulting a country whose laws he had broken and who had received a deserving punishment. I doubt I will have anything like that sort of experience here, but at the same time I wonder not only about the state of the places I will be seeing, but also about how I will be viewed as an observer.

After all, I do not view others as a neutral and disinterested party, in the eyes of those I observe at least. Just as I come to view parts of the world with my own perspective and my own expectations, so too others view me first and foremost as an American. At times, being an American brings with it advantages in that locals want to curry favor with America and figure that kindness and graciousness to Americans will spread the word that a place is well worth visiting and appreciating, and at other times local people want to blame me for the actions that the American government has done in and regarding their country. As someone who has never had any role in sending troops to places, or misappropriating foreign aid, or putting sanctions that cause death and misery in other lands, or toppled democratically elected regimes, or any other such real or supposed crimes against humanity, I tend to be deeply bothered by any insinuations that as an American I had any role in making the decisions that led to their suffering. Nor have I ever felt that it is the job of me or of my nation to ensure the conditions for a good life for the people of other nations. That is the job of their own governments, however well or badly it is done. The only job I have, at least the only one I have taken up, is to observe how others live in other lands, and to ponder what it says about humanity as a whole.