I Have Crossed Famous Rivers

My book club has chosen to read Nelson Mandela's memoir Long Walk to Freedom for its next discussion. Since I am generally a fan of memoirs as a genre, I am enjoying the walk with Mandela. I have reached the point in his story where he has returned to his hometown as a young man now in law school, having completed his B.A. degree. He makes the statement as he leaves home once again for the city, "I have crossed famous rivers." Essentially, it means that once one has traveled to various places afar, he or she gains wisdom and knowledge.

As I consider my own walk in comparison to Mandela's, I realize that we were both born into segregated societies; his was South Africa, and mine was the Mississippi Delta. As a child in poverty and as I completed high school, I had little hope that I would accomplish anything in my life other than perhaps working as a secretary and in the future buying a Jim Walters pre-fab, two-bedroom house. My dreams were simple. After all, my high school was literally located in the middle of a cotton patch.

Through the years, however, like Mandela I began to enlarge my view of the world and its possibilities. As with Mandela, I learned early that the hope of a better life was through education. I pursued that goal diligently for twenty-four years (kindergarten through a doctoral program). Like Mandela, as the years went on, I have crossed famous rivers. The first was likely the Mississippi River on my way after my high school graduation to live in Wichita. When my mother moved to Seattle, I loved taking the boat across Puget Sound into Victoria, B.C., and later up the Inside Passage toward Alaska. My first international trip included a boat ride on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam and one in Kiev, Ukraine, on the Dnieper River. Later I cruised to a renowned zoo across Sydney Harbour in Australia. A final trip five years ago included day cruises on the Rhine in Germany and the Seine in Paris. I am sure there must be others I have forgotten.

The point is that, like Mandela, I have learned much about different cultures through my travel experiences and thereby hope I too have become wiser and more knowledgeable about the world in general. Like the bildungsroman in literature, one cannot return home after crossing famous rivers without being, fully changed.