Our perspectives are shaped by our experiences good or bad. Travel is perspective shifting and helps restore perspective on where we stand in the world and what matters and what doesn’t. “This ability to see our own lives from such a radically different perspective is one of the greatest gifts that travel can give us,” argued Alan de Botton. It is the feeling we get when an experience rewards us with some clarity on something that has always been there but only this time our awareness of it becomes more surreal as if we got a new set of eyes — a moment of awe, the connection of a dot or better yet feeling of the sublime. As defined by Edmund Burke, On the Sublime, 1756 ed. J. T. Bolton, “Sublime experiences, whether in nature or in art, inspire awe and reverence, and an emotional understanding that transcends rational thought and words or language.  For Romantics, the sublime is a meeting of the subjective-internal (emotional) and the objective-external (natural world): we allow our emotions to overwhelm our rationality as we experience the wonder of creation.”

The paradox is that what makes a good traveler or a fulfilled traveler has less to do with a particular destination we are going to and much more to do with our attitudes towards it or what we come to see. Having a traveler’s mindset, the notion that the pleasure we derive from our travels may well be dependent on the mindset we travel with than on the destination. Therefore, what then, is a traveler’s mindset? Receptivity might be said to be its chief characteristic. By being receptive, we approach new places with humility and understand that both knowledge and experience arise unexpectedly. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting.

Perhaps one of our customers may have experienced such a feeling of the sublime and in every way personified what it means to be receptive and open to experiencing every experience interesting or not. She recounts her group’s visit to a voodoo village in Benin, West Africa, and witnessing the most marginal experience. As she narrates in an attempt to enter the voodoo village in Porto-Novo, they had to cross a bridge that swings to enter the voodoo village. At first, she was trying to observe a moving object and then there was a chicken that looks like was being used for a sacrifice however, the chicken marginally came back to life. This was a  ceremony showcasing the voodoo ceremony. Then came the elderly village women and looking in the faces of the women transported me back to my childhood days. The hairstyles of the women and how they tie their hair it was as if I am being transformed and transported back to Jamaica when I was a child. I felt a deep connection with these women and could feel their warm embrace, and their smiles all of which were so inviting and welcoming. The love, mannerisms the way they tie and comb their hair connected the dots and reminder me of where my ancestors really come from — Africa and may as well be Benin. We all have eyes but only a few could actually see. I wish I was an artist because I would have painted the scene and the ceremony. One of the women reminded her of her grandmother. I connected and felt a deep sense of connection to her so much so that I felt my grandmother was near. I felt like the lost child going home she added.

The ceremony she witnessed is the Zangbeto dancing voodoo ceremony. The Zangbeto are the traditional voodoo guardians of the night among the Ogu (or Egun) people of Benin, Togo, and Nigeria. Relating its fundamental cultural role in local vigilantism and community policing in Ogu societies, Zangbeto is a term in Gun language that means “Men of the night” or “Night-watchmen.” In Ogu culture, the Zangbetos are the traditional security guards or policemen of their communities. They are said to form a secret society that can only be strictly attended by Zangbeto or voodoo worshipers and devotees. Zangbeto is deemed to have spiritistic and magical abilities, such as swallowing splinters of glass without coming to any harm and scaring away even witches. In a trance, the Zangbeto are said to evoke a power that inhabited the earth long before the appearance of man and provide a source of wisdom and continuity for the Ogu people.

While we may not know the inner workings of the universe, her grandmother may very well have been near. Hearing her reflecting on the Zangbeto voodoo ceremony and the women in the village and making the connection to her grandmother reminded me of this beautiful and paradoxical poem by the founder of the Metaphysical Poets of the 17th century, John Donne who is most commonly  known for his vibrancy, inventiveness, and paradoxes in one of my favorite poems of his:

Present in Absence;

Absence, hear thou my protestation

Against thy strength,

Distance, and length;

Do what thou canst for alteration:

For hearts of truest mettle

Absence doth join, and Time doth settle.

The great medieval traveler Ibn Battuta may have also experienced the feeling of the sublime or may very well have been in search of it. For over 24 years from 1325 to 1349, his travels reached from Morocco to China, the Maldives to the Steppes of Asia, Constantinople, Russia, and nearly everywhere in between. As he set out on his own to experience many parts of the world an urge he described as an overmastering impulse within me not for accumulating miles or points as these things seem to shape our modern-day travels but rather tracing a sacred geography of shrines and mysterious experiences with hidden meaning. He rhapsodizes about the deeper meaning of his travels/pilgrimage. He declared: “Of the wondrous doings of God Most High is this: that He has created the hearts of men with an instinctive desire to seek these sublime sanctuaries, yearning to present themselves at their illustrious sites, and has given the love of them such power over men’s hearts that no one alights in them, but they seize his whole heart, nor quits them but with grief at their departure.” We can experience the feeling of the sublime anywhere on our travels just as we can experience poetry anywhere. What matters most is our awareness, open-mindedness, and receptivity to places, people, and experiences.

Together with his scribe, Ibn Juzayy Ibn Battuta’s travel experiences were written producing a massive manuscript with a beautiful title: “A gift to those who contemplate the wonders of cities and the marvels of traveling.” The result was monumental, a text of a thousand pages making it the biggest travel book ever written in terms of the ground that it covered.

As you travel we hope you stay receptive, open-minded, and aware of your surroundings — you may one day experience this magnificent and transcendental feeling of the sublime.

Feeling Inspired?: Visit our African Homecoming page — a page dedicated to African history, Africa’s great civilizations, people, places, history, culture, and traditions and uncover the untold stories of the diverse and vast African continent. Encompassing a wide range of experiences, the page is inspired by our travelers who are cultural ambassadors, erudite for ebullient discussions, gluttons for authentic cultural experiences and stories, with an inveterate passion for travel. We’re always here to take the guesswork out of your travel experiences to the African continent – experiences that shift perspectives and fuel imagination.