It seems like a lifetime ago that I was another over-booked Elon student, bearing allegiances to multiple organizations via pins on my backpack as I jogged from one activity to the next, overtired and overworked. I think about that lifestyle and I look at how different mine is now as I float down the western coast of Africa with little to do outside of my homework, looking for sea creatures and watching the waves roll by.
Life at sea is not for everyone. In fact, I’m starting to think that life at sea isn’t for most people. I know a lot of folks that would hate the inability to ever walk in a straight line, the consistent rocking of their bed at night and the lack of space to escape to should they ever want a break from the people around them.
Tack that onto the vastness of free time we seem to ceaselessly find ourselves in, and you’ve got a nightmare for a large majority of the human population. But it’s under these conditions that I have found myself thriving.
With all of my free time and inability to connect to wifi, I have started doing a fun thing called, "engaging in the opportunities around me." I’m somewhat of a go-getter, but that usually revolves around things such as volunteering to read from the script in screenwriting class or giving a tour to a group of intended engineering majors, though I know nothing about those areas of study.
If you look at my lack of experience out of the country and my inability to commit to things, it’s believable that I wasn’t planning to dive head first into any kind of programs or organizations here on the ship. I’d spent the past few weeks making new friends, watching movies I brought on a hard drive and getting plenty of sleep.
But just this past week I took a chance on something, and I couldn’t be happier.
Semester at Sea hosts a variety of reputable scholars between ports known as Interport Lecturers — these are experts on a subject native to the upcoming country we are visiting. The lecturer for our upcoming arrival in Cape Town is a man named Michael Williams, a director and successful playwright who is the current director of the Cape Town Opera.
An announcement was made following his arrival that students interested in musical theater should join him in creating a small showcase. I thought about attending but decided against it —things like that tend to draw in an overzealous crowd that I didn’t want to be associated with. Later in the week, a friend encouraged me to go with her to the next rehearsal. I had lost patience on a fruitless whale watch and figured that it couldn’t hurt to show up - I could always fake seasickness and leave.
I arrived at the meeting room filled with a pack of students learning a warm-up exercise, chanting African hymns and squatting low over the ground under the instruction of the interport lecturer.
I decided to stay as he taught us the words to songs with vibrant and theatrical movements. I laughed at the way he urged us to play impoverished orphans, carefree songbirds and a phenomenon he referred to as “sexy boys” - a somewhat reputable brand of gangsters native to Cape Town in the 1950s. I joked about the lyrics and poked fun at the other students, but when rehearsal ended two hours later, I realized how much fun I’d been having.
The week progressed as I attended these rehearsals each night, and I noticed myself getting more excited each time.
I learned about why we were performing the songs we worked on each night. One song is actually a stage adaptation of a momentous rally hosted by supporters of Nelson Mandela as he urged the townspeople to help him in the struggle against apartheid. Another song discussed the tumultuous outbreak of war between two family-owned taxi companies that saw the death of a young boy due to their unsafe driving conditions.
The songs we learned were little pieces of the culture we were about to experience, which told the story of the people we’ve yet to meet. I thought I’d spent a whole week laughing and sweating, but realized at the end just how much I had learned about my fellow shipmates and the nation we were about to experience.
The week ended with a packed show in which we showed off everything we’d learned to the rest of the community on board. People approached us after the performance, telling us how much they loved our smiles, dances and the lessons we were portraying. The Interport Lecturer thanked us for our time, effort and for our eagerness to learn the stories of his people.
So much of throwing yourself out there, learning new things and finding success in this world is showing up. Some of the best experiences occur when people go to the wrong meeting, meet up with someone else’s blind date or attend the event they told themselves they didn’t want to go to. You just might love it.
And if you hate it, you can always blame seasickness.