11 Jul Casey Scott Leach
Casey Scott Leach, a participant in the Dadaab Theater Project, shares his thoughts on the experience.
The excerpt, from Paulo Coehlo’s book the Pilgrimage, went like this:
When you travel, you experience, in a very particular way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don’t even understand the language the people speak. So you are like a child just out of the womb. You begin to attach much more importance to the things around you because your survival depends upon them. You begin to be more accessible to others because they may be able to help you in difficult situations. And you accept any small favor from the gods with great delight, as if it were en episode you would remember for the rest of your life.
At the same time, since all things are new, you see only the beauty in them, and you feel happy to be alive. That’s why a religious pilgrimage has always been one of the most objective ways of achieving insight.”
During this trip, I was able to be a child again. And it wasn’t just me, but I felt the whole group made this transformation. Some of us, who weren’t able to have childhoods, were able to have one for the first time. This was made manifest in many ways; we played camp games, hand games, we sang songs, we danced silly dances. We swung on a giant, slightly dangerous swing set. We ran after animals and were scared when they didn’t run away. We raced each other. We laughed, all of us, very hard, and often. We also cried, each of us, very hard, and often. We didn’t know our place in the world. In fact, our entire worldview didn’t make sense anymore (we were passing through the stages of adolescence too, it seems). We had to deal with the duality and complexity of life, that it is both beautiful and ugly in the same moment. Good and Evil. Comedic and Tragic. That life is unfair, uneven, and doesn’t play favorites, even though sometimes it seems that like it does. I have heard about this from great authors I’ve read and plays I’ve performed in. Going to Africa made it very clear to me that I only knew the idea of that truth. This trip was a step towards that truth; by no means do I believe I fully understand the complexity of that paradox. But, just as the quote indicates, regardless of the hardships, whether we were in the throes of ecstasy or of agony, it was all still beautiful, and I was happy to be there and to be alive. My mantra for this trip was ‘there is no adventure without risk.’ I took risks, many different kinds of risks. Some went in my favor, some didn’t. But it was an adventure just the same. Yeah. It was an awesome adventure.