The Freedom of the South African Sky

Dec 6, 2016

By Harry Kidby

The Freedom of the South African Sky

Freedoms bounce and move and roam through a million different places, words and feelings. The idea of travelling, in itself, brings with it almost an automatic sense of freedom; an unfamiliar road with junctions of possibilities sprouting off it, that hold so many doors open to so many different futures.

Exploring the new or refreshing the old brings with it freedom. The most obvious being the chance to leave behind the various platforms that inundate us with inanity minute by minute. This in itself, although freeing however, does not touch the soul with an intensity akin to a right.

Many cultures around the world often do not understand vagrant wandering, especially of women, when roles and lives are strictly defined. On many occasions baffled eyes, from faces scarfed or beautiful in their darkness, regard me as peculiar for leaving the familiarity of my family and country. The yearning however to befriend these people and smell their lives pulls me constantly from my home. Leaving behind the comfort of what I know is a deep-rooted need, that if repressed suffocates. Discovering the new is the greatest of freedoms and can be found in the corners of my own country as well as in the places to which I am alien.

If this feeling of freedom were to be entrenched within the physical it would be the simple act of glancing up and surveying of the sky. The viewing of something so familiar can impress upon you the differences of your surroundings and illustrate your freedom.

This action never fails to touch me with a sense of opportunity and independence. My day-to-day heavens are bracketed by the familiar, the same buildings, the well-known trees that wonder in their seasons but don’t change and explored horizons. The geometric shapes of blue/grey left by their borders could be drawn from memory. The commonplace makes me wonder and remember. Looking up into a sky that I know blankets us all but is trimmed by the unknown is a point of absolute liberty.

I first realised what this blue abyss truly meant to me when I was 13 and discovering the continent of Africa for the first time. Looking out of the window, as I bumped along a dirt road in the middle of South Africa I realised just how big the sky is. The centre of London and even the lush green fields of the English countryside have a cap on them, but here was a sky that seemingly stretched on and on forever. It made me think of just how many lives are being lived under skies I don’t know and it presented me with an urgency to discover them.

In South America locals do not talk of a man in a moon, instead they see a rabbit with long ears that parades itself at night. Freedom is a darkness familiar in its blackness but completely different in its comprehension. When I am home and I see the plough, as a saucepan able to hold the stars I think of everyone in Argentina who sees it overturned, spilling its nightly contents, and I feel free.

Standing head raised at dusk in the Omo region, at the very bottom of Ethiopia, one could be the last of humankind. The Rift Valley Mountains gently lip the hazy washed out sky in different tones and shades of purple. A sense of what it must have been like to think you could reach the end of the world and fall from it envelops you. Again the same sky, one that we all rotate in, and experience yet one that offers such differences if you seek to see it from another perspective. A sky that, by simply looking up, places upon you an almost tangible sensation of freedom.

The atmosphere that surrounds us is a true wonder that not only hands out beauty and makes you realised why great artists have fixated upon it but also gives you freedom and escapism. Even when at home my own sky, the one I know so well, can transport me across continents and into different peoples lives. Familiar contours don’t have to bind me; they can catapult me. On the equator or leaning out of my window if my head is raised I am free.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence 2016 Travel Writing Award and tell your story.

About the Author

Harry Kidby

Miss Harry Kidby is an enthusiastic young writer from London. One of her passions is exploring the world and discovering what endless possibilities of adventure there are beneath the great blue (or grey if you are from London) sky!

We Said Go Travel