Theroux's Trip To Southern Africa

In Far Eastern and Western cultures, people can trade in their skins for new skins on a day known as Halloween. Annually, millions of tourists leave their homes to visit foreign places where they celebrate Halloween daily. When in a new place where no one knows who you are or your troubles, it is our instinct to assume identities we have always desired in order to make ourselves feel better. Upon arriving in these foreign lands, tourists discover that the locals are also putting on facades. Facades are a part of our everyday life where we try to look as though we are doing fine to make other people comfortable and feel better about themselves. Somehow in our own twisted way as human beings, it makes us happy to know that there are other …show more content…
In Southern Africa, Theroux shed his seasoned travel writer skin in exchange for the skin of a twenty-two-year-old teacher, which is referred to in the quote below. Besides celebrating Halloween on his trip, Theroux contemplates his reasons for embarking on his trip and why he chose Southern Africa. “And that kind of traveling was a way of recovering my youth, because as a twenty-two-year-old teacher at a small school in rural Africa I had spent some of the happiest years of my life — years of freedom and friendship and great hope,” (12). During his travel to Southern Africa, Theroux impacted the area greatly by contributing to the education system as a teacher. As a teacher, Theroux was impacted as well because he had the opportunity to meet many new people, learn about new cultures and form lifelong friendships. This ties into Theroux’s reference to his youth as a time of freedom and the belief that one can do anything. When older individuals such as Paul Theroux in this case refer to their “youth,” it introduces thoughts of a time when they were able to do whatever they wanted to do without worrying about anyone but themselves. I believe Theroux put it best in this portion of the quote, “years of freedom and friendship and great hope,” (12). During his years as at a teacher, Theroux was free to travel several thousand miles far from home and meet new people. In the quote below, Theroux provides more evidence of the theory that people travel to reclaim their youth, “... it occurs to me that someone else should be doing this, someone younger perhaps, hungrier, stronger, more desperate, crazier,” (15). In Southern Africa, Theroux realizes that although he is desperately trying to grasp the fading straws of his youth, his bones creak beneath his new