Do you suffer from a hermit affliction?

A large number of South Africans tend to be adverse to travel, notes Ndumiso Ngcobo

During the compulsory chit-chat one is often dragged into when being ferried from the airport into the city - in this case, Cape Town - my cab driver inquired about the veracity of a rumour he'd heard about seven-lane highways in Johannesburg. I didn't want to be responsible for shattering his land of make-believe, so I mumbled a vague confirmation.

What blew my mind about this particular interaction was when my driver then went on to explain to me that the only time he'd ever been out of Cape Town in his 66 years of existence was in 1977 when he visited family in Riverlea, south of Joburg. He volunteered this information matter-of-factly, without any hint of embarrassment.

The voices inside my head remarked to each other that in 1977 BJ Vorster hadn't even passed on the keeping-the-natives-in-their-place baton to Die Groot Krokodil. It was a long, long time ago.

I shouldn't have been amazed, I suppose. At last year's Cape Town Book Fair, I met a 39-year-old university graduate who admitted (at least sheepishly) that she'd never been to Durban or Port Elizabeth and that her only "experience" of Gauteng was the terminal building at OR Tambo while in transit on her sole trip to London.

Before the thinner-skinned villagers of the Mother City descend upon me like vagrants upon a discarded chicken-and-mayo sandwich and accuse me of picking on Capetonians, let me be the first to acknowledge that people from other parts of the country also suffer from this hermit affliction. Capetonians just have a special variant of the disease.

My wife, who hails from Tshwane, was a resident of Cape Town for much of the 1990s. She often remarks that Table Mountain acts as a kind of psychological barrier for some people, as if it were the end of the world. Beyond it there be dragons, perhaps.

But, like I said, they're not the only ones. I've often shared how people from my neck of the hood in the Kingdom of the Zulu get sporadic urges to separate the souls of bovine creatures from their bodies in order that they may communicate with the ancestors. During one such gathering, a few of us huddled around a platter of internal delicacies. A fellow in his 40s proudly announced that he'd never been to the beach despite having lived in Chesterville, Durban, all his life.

I almost choked on a piece of chewy intestine as my internal GPS calculated the Indian Ocean to be less than 10km away. The smug recluse squashed any debate with a one-liner: "I know what the ocean looks like from TV. Besides, what would be the point? I can't swim." Who could argue against such watertight logic?

I'm not sharing these encounters with the travel-averse among us for the exclusive purpose of mocking them, although that's admittedly a major motivational factor. My point is that we're all wired very differently. I think travelling is almost as central to my existence as oxygen or sacred amber liquids served on the rocks. For me, travel is not a luxury one splurges on because the bills have been paid and there's a little left over so what the hell.

I go to places because I've read about the majestic landscapes of Thaba 'Nchu or the mighty rumble of Victoria Falls and I want to experience them first-hand. I want to get into drunken debates with pompous, yellow-toothed English gentlemen in dingy pubs in Oxford.

I feel this way because I believe in the cross-pollination of ideas, of philosophies and culture. Hell, I believe in the cross-pollination of genetic material. Were it not for my wife's baffling lack of commitment to my noble cause, I'd be spending my summers in Stockholm, injecting some colour into that otherwise pale gene pool.

But I digress. Travelling is what separates us from plankton and all manner of seaweed at the bottom of the ocean, exposed to the same scenery, day in, day out. And yet in my native Durban, people from 'Toti in the south of the city think you've lost your marbles when you say you're off to Umhlanga, a half-hour drive to the north. "At this time?" they ask, incredulous. "Are you sleeping over?" And should you say you're going to Maritzburg, they pack a provisions basket for you.

My friends often give me grief about my penchant for cheap Mr Price shorts and sandals. What they don't realise is that I'm saving my money. Space travel will become an economically viable reality in our lifetime and I can tell you this: even if I can only afford the cheap seat next to the rockets, I'm going.

If you're one of those cynics having a good giggle at my delusions, consider this. Back in 1905, people like you said this whole aviation thing was a passing fad. In 2055, I'll send you a postcard from Mars.

E-mail ngcobon@sundaytimes.co.za or find him on twitter @NdumisoNgcobo

Note: Ndumiso will be back in person next week. This column is a classic from 2011. It appears in his book Eat, Drink & Blame the Ancestors, a collection of Sunday Times columns (Two Dogs & Sunday Times Books, R190).