Down Under (Australia)

After the Qantas plane ride I felt as if I warped through time. The time change from the western hemisphere, where my hometown in Pennsylvania rests, to the southern hemisphere where Brisbane, Australia rests, was an unexpectedly subtle one. A few nights before, I started staying up late, to adjust to the 14-hour time difference. I watched re-runs of The Fresh Prince and was busy making memories with my Pittsburgh family before my departure.

I left Pittsburgh July 19, and arrived, finally, in Australia on July 21.

Factually, I was the farthest I had ever been in my life from home. The opportunity to encounter kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, and whales were now tangible. One of my first stops was the Great Barrier Reef.

To say the waters of Australia are beautiful would be an understatement. Nothing, except for a few glossy covers of magazines, can rival these waters, and still the magazine covers could have been photo-shopped.

The top of the water glistens a bright blue color and on the edges a deep green takes life. I made up in my mind that I would have to get in the waters. I was in the ocean, far away from the Highland Park swimming pool that I went to as a kid. I was a representative of all the people who could not take such a journey, and I wouldn’t let it go in vain.

I was given a skin-tight wetsuit. I have never had to wear anything that tight. The neoprene stretched it’ way over my body in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. The snorkel went on next. This weird breathing apparatus was apparently my key to survival.

I took a quick practice swim with one of the instructors. I hooked my arm on the orange lifesaver and delivered a few futile kicks. What ever fears I had were now pushed aside for curiosity. I looked down to the world that is so close to us, yet so distant.

A strange fish swam by on my left. It was blue, magenta, and looked like an impossible mixture of neon and metallic. A few inches on my right a school of small fish swam in sync.

Sea anemones rule the ocean floor. The coral reef is beautiful to look at, but as the instructor of my group warned you must be careful, “the ocean is rife with bacteria.” The spaghetti-like arms of the sea anemones petrified me, because I knew they stung over-ambitious divers. I would later learn from a fellow student studying in biology that not all sea anemones stings.

Crammed in the middle of the anemones was a giant clam. It had soft fringes on the outside of its opening. The brave put their hand in the mouth and watched as the clam slowly closed.

The winter months of Australia were not suitable for box jellyfish. They would be out in the summer months which is sometime in November. I won’t be there.

Now it was my turn to venture on my own.

The choppy waters of the Great Barrier Reef swallowed me whole. In fact, the last time that I went swimming I referred to my education level by number. I was in 11th.
In high school, I would imagine that the waters of the school’s pool had somehow transformed into artic oceans or bellowing seas. This time, I wasn’t imaging.

My snorkel had tilted so far that water was constantly entering my mouth. Instead of oxygen, I breathed salt water. My arms felt like they had transformed to stone, and I started to sink.

I managed to make it shore and shake the overbearing weight of paranoia. I stood on shore and thought the only thing to be thankful for was that I didn’t get sunburned in the harsh climate.

I was wrong. I had that, and so much more to be thankful for.

An Unforgettable Journey (Ghana)

I remember a brown globe that was always near me. The globe that I had as a child took me to far-off lands such as Iceland, Russia, Zimbabwe, Guatemala and so many more. There were moments when I would stare at the globe for hours and wonder what it would be like to live in a place other than America.

n middle school I was faced with a harsh reality -- I did not know my origin. Everyone in my class basically knew where they came from -- whether it was Poland or Ireland, they all knew where they came from. I knew I came from someplace, and that place was called Africa. I was in the art room at the time. I listened to a student speak of being Jewish and speaking Hebrew. I did not know what my language was, but I knew that I had one. I also knew that somewhere in the motherland that I had family, that my ebony skin didn't shine like the warriors of a thousand tribes for nothing.

Years after my art class, I was a sophomore in the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. I was in English class when the student body was dismissed for an assembly. In the brown seats that filled the auditorium, I marveled at what I heard. The man standing on stage said any one of us could take the opportunity to make a trip to a new land. It was my chance. My chance to see a link of myself other than in America.

I had chosen Ghana as a country that I wanted to explore. It seemed interesting and its culture of gold mines, tribes, and slave castles seemed rich. I was granted the opportunity to go to Ghana that summer by the Experiment in International Living. I nestled right in with my group. My group and I had been touring the country for a few weeks when we were notified that we were going to a slave castle.

Ghana has two slave castles: the Elmina Castle and the Cape Coast Castle. Both castles were fortresses of terror. They were holding places for human cargo. The Elmina Castle was the one on our agenda that day. Elmina Castle, one of the first slave trading areas in Africa, was constructed by the Portuguese in 1482 and captured by the Dutch in 1673. The castle served a major role of trading with Brazil and the Caribbean. Now it is a place where tourists can come and see the harsh realities of slavery up close.

We stood outside of the castle. From the outside it looked marvelous. The architectural work was distinctive. The cannons that lined the wall and the drawbridge at the entrance of the castle let me see something real. We walked over the top of the drawbridge and were met by the tour guide.

I wondered what I might learn that day. I was thinking over and over that I was probably standing in a spot in which my relatives stood. I reminisced about the history of slavery that I had been taught, but this was something that had more significance than a textbook. I was actually somewhere that mattered. I was face to face with the ghost of tragedy.

The guide led my group, consisting of teenage students and a few adult leaders, to the dreadful dungeon. The dungeon is where they held the male slaves. I imagined it, people packed as tight as sardines in a tin. The cramped space was not fit for anyone. The musty air filtered in and out, the paint chipped walls seemed like a border separating the pain of the slaves from the others. The guide told stories of men fighting for food, air and life. The room was about the size of a city playground but hundreds of bodies, souls and lives were packed into the room. I felt sick because I could see and hear the cries of affliction. In the upper part of the dungeon was a hole. The hole let in light and air that barely helped.

The dungeon and its tears ripped my soul. The tour guide led us to a place behind the dungeon. He took us to a door where slaves could not return from: It was called the door of no return. The door was the right size for a child but it was what the captives had to pass through. The door was closed and I could see the light encompass the outside brim. The guide opened the door and I looked through its battered frame, it was the same frame the 30,000 slaves passed through by the 18th century.

As a young African-American male, I find that there is not a lot that history books teach me about my heritage, besides the occasional civil rights movement chapters, and sections on great motivators like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.

This is probably going to be the closest thing to my ancestors as I would get. I could not pinpoint the exact African country my ancestors came from or their names -- I only know that it all intertwined and passed through me. I did not have any direct relatives outside of the United States, but I know they exist. I do not have a special language that I grew up speaking in my home, but it seemed that I had found something.

The group, the trip and Ghana helped me realize that I also have a history.

Outside the waves of the ocean splashed together in harmony. The breeze helped calm my soul. I had experienced something that I had not experienced before and I felt free! I felt free because I had something to remember.