1996

It’s 1996, apartheid is in its death throes, I meet Daniel by chance in Johannesburg. Together we hatch a plan to escape the country and embark on a road trip across the USA. It is clear we are trying to escape ourselves and our dysfunctional white upbringing. Near the end of the road trip, which acts as a primer for a much larger individual trip around the world, I meet Kim. I write to her with my insights, thoughts, and feelings throughout my world trip, she never once replies. The journey exposes my upbring and my country of birth for the dystopia it was, and I use my various experiences whilst venturing into former communist countries and populist South American dictatorships, to analyse and explain the unbearable whiteness of being during those days in South Africa. The story takes a surprising twist at the end of the trip with me going to see Kim, where I come face to face with a horrible truth.