By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
A friend and I were invited to a wedding in the USA in 2014. The invite came with a promise to cover half of the flight costs and accommodation was covered by the host. I was pleasantly surprised, but quickly trusted that she was genuine as I had had a similar offer to travel to Australia, which was my first international travel. In this trip to the USA, a beautiful soul was getting married to her soul mate. It was to be the first union of same sex marriage that I was privileged to attend. It challenged all existing historical stereotypes and life assumptions. Here I was, a black South African, young professional, setting off to a wedding of a white American, lesbian friend. When I told my this, she could not comprehend to a point when she wanted to question my our sexual orientation, however she continued not to. I think this was because she was afraid that her asking might confirm her worst fears. I went in this trip and it was amazing. This friend was generous enough to make it possible for me to visit my home girls that had been living in New Jersey for over 8 years and had not visited back home in that time. I was in the a five hour bus ride from Baltimore to New York. To say that I was literally walking on air would be an understatement. I was in disbelief that a girl like me, from Inanda and has had a life surrounded by by death and poverty had had such an opportunity to live a dream that I was afraid to even start dreaming as I only saw disappointment. I could not belive the generosity of my home girl, whom we were not really friends with back home, but the spirit of togetherness just engulfed us and we have since remained as close as can be. Some of her friends, unknown to me came to spend a whole weekend with me because I held what they missed the most, the spirit from home. It felt a bit overwhelming to be touched by them. I went back to Baltimore to be a witness at the wedding. Before the wedding, we participated on a beautiful 4 day hike. It was my first experience of a proper hike and fell in love with it since then. The wedding was between 2 Americans but the spirit of togetherness or what we call Ubuntu shone through in every thing. The wedding was an international communal event as it brought all of us from different corners of the world. I learnt a lot about being there as this was a trip of a lot of firsts. I learned that despite the bad things and bad people that exist in our world, there are also a lot of good and trustworthy people. One just needs to be open minded and open hearted to different opportunities that may come your way. There is a lot of beauty in diversity. People are as eager to learn about you as you are about them. Your life experiences matter and different but not insignificant or comparable to others. My love people was enhanced. I was welcome with open arms. I even ate crab, and if you must know, in my culture a crab symbolises some connections to the ancestors and we cannot play with them. It was refreshing to see and be part of something different and enriched me as a person.