Africa's not for Sissies

Chapter 1 - Brother From Another Mother

"Travel can be a powerful force in changing our world into one where there is more understanding and less problems."

¬- scribbled on a washroom wall at a hostel

"Only man with small penis pees in cubicle."

- also scribbled on the wall

Ammon was my brother from another mother in every sense. He was a "brother" in the sense that he was a black man, he was my "brother" in the sense that we were best friends, and he was legally my brother, since my parents adopted him. And that pretty much explains the another mother part, if only in the strict biological sense.

My parents adopted him before I was born. They had tried for many years to get pregnant, and when they eventually consulted with a doctor they learned that they would likely never conceive a child naturally. Faced with this news, my parents considered the options. There were medical procedures they could undergo, but in the end they decided if they couldn't get pregnant without the help of medical science then they simply weren't meant to conceive and they decided to adopt. Instead of adopting locally – they would have to wait several years to get a baby in Canada – they decided to adopt a baby that really needed the help. They travelled to Africa, and in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, they met and fell in love with baby orphan Ammon, my big bro.

Three years later when I came along, they called me their "miracle baby." According to the doctors, my father had "low motility" and my mother "poor egg quality," which basically meant I was the product of lazy sperm and shitty eggs, so I never really understood how that made me a miracle. It seemed a more likely explanation as to why I was always the smallest kid in my class and bad at sports.

With my straw hair and rosy cheeks, my parents called me their "little toy soldier." Ammon was my opposite in every way. Besides the obvious black-white thing, he was tall, muscular, good looking, charismatic, and brave. Growing up, we were inseparable. If Ammon had an idea, I was sure to think it was a good one, and since I was smaller and younger than Ammon, I was the one who always got hurt. Whether it was tobogganing down a big hill and jumping over a frozen creek or racing our bikes down a big hill, I would be the one to crash through the ice or swallow a mouthful of dirt. I could never say no to Ammon, which was why when he suggested we go backpacking in Africa, I agreed, even though the thought of it scared me witless.

Having lived my whole life in a small town in northern Ontario, to me backpacking meant strapping on a backpack, hiking into the bush, and sleeping in a tent. I figured that was what Ammon wanted to do, only in Africa. I didn't much like camping, mostly because of the bears and the black flies, but lions and malarial mosquitoes frightened me even more. I envisioned us huddled inside a flimsy tent on the African savannah as lions circled, patiently waiting for one of us to venture outside for a pee – and I have a very small bladder. But Ammon explained to me that backpacking was just a term to describe a certain type of vacation, which didn't sound much like a vacation at all.

"This isn't going to be an ordinary vacation, Will," he said. "We're not going to be tourists. We're going to be travelers." He pronounced tourist like it was a bad word.

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"Little bro, you have so much to learn."

What I learned is this: