Whatever there is, is only here.

"Travel in all the four quarters of the earth,

yet you will find nothing anywhere.

Whatever there is,

is only here."

Lately, I have been thinking why it has become almost a necessity to travel to get some experience and see the "real world". Finland is a very specific country, in that the people are very much the same nationality and have a strong sense of Finnish nationality. We do not have enough cross-cultural conflicts, not enough to change the perspectives of the people. Our society is safe and relatively stable. In many ways it seems to present some sort of an ideal of a stable democratic state. We Finns of course easily disagree as we know the deeper details of our welfare state which are not always that positive. Yet the international audience does not pay much attention to Finland, and we remain a rather unknown country somewhere in the shadow of Russia and the rest of Scandinavia.

If Finland is an ideal, why is it so tempting to leave it, almost expected of you. Especially at a young age. I guess a simple answer is that we can travel, we can see the world. We also tend to think that traveling opens your eyes, makes you find yourself, understand the world better, respect difference and respect what you have. Yes it does do that to you, and the more you travel to real places and meet real people, the effect can be profound. Yet, somehow I am starting to feel like for many traveling is a way of escaping things you do not want to face, escaping the simplicity of life, escaping the duties of life, and the sadness of life, too. In the end, life has the same face everywhere, different appearances, yet it functions very much the same way everywhere. Life is simple, it is everyday life, routine, small joys, disappointments, same things make us sad, we have the same basic human needs. Why do we need to go so far to realise the most simple things that are right infront of us.

Ok I am talking about myself here, how I struggle with the thought of only running through different places, being afraid of settling down, accepting facts and enjoying what I have is right here. A part of me is not ready for that yet. I still enjoy looking at life in different places. Imagining myself in their places, how I would react, would I be able to cope? In most cases not.

The most important things in life are so, so basic. So basic, that it is the same everywhere. You can run away from them, only to find them again at another place.

And yet, we, international students, student who can afford traveling to far away places, for many to experience everything else but studying. South Africa is not enough, we have to see the neighbouring countries too, to see some of the real Africa out there. Maybe only because we are too blind to see that the real things are, again, right in front of us, like in where we all come from.

It is a really sad thought, that I would not have been able to meet the few really important people in South Africa, who have helped me to see the real Africa, the real South Africa, as it is.

They are all very different kind of people, with different backgrounds, social statuses, different ethnic backgrounds. They are all mad about this country, they do anything to live a good life here.

A couple of weeks ago in Kayamandi, where we have our after-school programme, this one boy asks to come and talk to me. They do not do that often, they do not yet trust me, and they rarely open up with personal things, but he had to. He was very sad and troubled, he struggled to say what he had to say. He had 100 Rand in his pocket, he was supposed to get medicine for his mother as she was very sick, but he forgot the piece of paper where he had written the name of the medicine home, and had no choice but to run home to get it.

Often the boys test us, how easily they can fool us, for example in going to the toilet in the middle of the class, and then you find them chatting to friends outside the classroom. You don't know who to believe, the stories are sometimes so troubled, so unbelievable. He said he will run home as fast as he can. And he ran, so fast that I knew he was not lying.

Some of the kids have such hard lives, that I cannot even understand. Kids being abused, living without parents, looking after their siblings. And they are still kids. Some really talented ones, some want to become poets, some singers, some want to travel somewhere far away, leave South Africa. Why, I asked. Because they want to see more of the world, "because it is not good here".