Voyageur

Life can be envisioned as a journey through lifespan and existence. Besides physical growth and development there is also cognitive and spiritual learning. Man’s awareness grows all the time. Even without eventually resolving the deep questions he comes to have a deep insight into life, existence and destiny. This is a worthwhile exercise, having intrinsic value in and of itself, like a pilgrimage. The story, spanning a school term, tells of Juma, a teacher who has been newly posted to a school that is far from his home. The new people around him, their culture; and the climate and weather, impact on him in a subtle powerful way. Not everything makes immediate sense, and in this way becomes like a cross-word puzzle that his intellect, experience and awareness must tackle. The exercise gifts him a pleasurable tension between knowing and not knowing, ordinary life and adventure. This combines with the physical distance between station and home to make him feel, surreally, that he has come far on a journey of quest, but there is still a long way to go, so much so that he has even hardly began. The term comes to an end. As he prepares to travel home for the school holiday, in both his mind and heart he is actually already on a voyage that both terrifies and fascinates him.