So fitting that I update for this book during Heritage month. What a ride it was reading Lerato’s adventures.
11 years ago Lerato Mogoatlhe decided she was tired of her life in South Africa with it’s routines of celebrity-filled parties through her lifestyle and entertainment job as a journalist. What she thought would be a 3 month trip to West Africa, turned into 5 years of travelling Africa. This is an honest account of her navigating between all the borders, the ‘uniforms’ as she calls customs officials that she encounters, the different cultures and deep history in the architectural structures she sees.
She had always wanted to travel Africa but as she states “I could afford to travel all along. I just didn’t prioritize it”. But Lerato isn’t the plan things to a tee kind of woman because her arrival in Dakar isn’t as ideal as the travel enthusiasts arrive with a shuttle waiting at the airport with her name on a cardboard ready to whisk her off to a 5 star hotel. She hasn’t even booked that. She’s got a “dental floss” budget, she just has the surety that she is home.
This book will ignite a need for you to want to travel! Not only travel but to travel the African continent, which is something I as a [guilty] South African never think or even put in my plans. Lerato put it fittingly when she says “I could afford to travel all along. I just didn’t prioritize it.” The themes in this travel memoir include love, heartbreak, culture, passion for life and living it fully and a fearlessness I couldn’t comprehend at times. I enjoyed the journal style of recording her travels, for its authenticity. This honesty comes out when she surrendered herself to have authentic experiences with the people of one of the countries. She takes us on adventures including breaking bread with dignitaries and world known musicians in Timbuktu to visiting the Great Pyramid – a childhood dream of hers; to sneaking her way into a hotel when the invoices she issued back home weren’t getting paid and money was low. She shares a great playlist of African musicians who I would have never thought of listening to and reminded me of how I used to hear Lucky Dube playing all over the radio growing up. She makes you want to compile a playlist of all the songs she mentions (I created a Vagabond inspired playlist here) and read up on all the history that encouraged her decision to go to all 21 countries.
Lerato takes you through all emotions, from fear for her health and safety, to a sense of pride for being an African and a whole sense of gratitude that the Ubuntu she experiences is always readily waiting for us because as she says she’s home in Africa. Vagabond is defined as “wandering from place to place without any settled home” in the dictionary, this is what Lerato believes:
“I have been travelling Africa since 2008. While I know only too well that there are ways of arriving in a new country, like knowing where I’m going and where I will be staying, I will never be this person, and it’s okay because I’m home in Africa.
Publisher: BlackBird Books
Publish Date: February 2019
No. of Pages: 285
Rating: 5/5 Stars
