It’s easy to take what we have on this continent for granted. Many of us have grown up seeing beautiful animals in the bush, heard languages alien to us in the most familiar way, and tasted the contrasting flavours of flame cooked food with sweet spices. Home sweet home. But maybe it’s something more than the familiar feeling of home that causes these sounds and sensations to intoxicate us; maybe our country, this continent, has a certain je ne sais quoi that isn’t lost on those who haven’t grown up here. 

Luckily enough, Italcham has empirical evidence that that special feeling may indeed have something objective to it. The phrase ‘mal d’africa’, translating to something like “the illness of Africa” or “Africa sickness” describes the intense and particular nostalgia those who have visited Africa feel about their time there, along with a deep and intense desire to return. While its earliest usage may have indeed been a negative one, describing the various plights of Africa throughout its history, it is now used to acknowledge the beauty of the continent and the experience it provides, which one can never forget. 

Of course, no good phrase can be as simple as sunshine and roses. Africa has faced a turbulent past and continues to recover from it today. Indeed, it is no coincidence that this beautiful phrase, and the beautiful sensation it describes, alludes to illness. But that’s the point, “there is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion, " as Edgar Allan Poe once said. 

The Chamber has proved a petri dish for this particular ailment, to put it slightly crudely, as the environment in which we find ourselves includes South Africans, Italo-South Africans, Italians who have been here for years and those who have only just arrived. A diverse group of people and yet, as rare as it is for people at the best of times, there is consensus about the sentiments inspired by the birthplace of humankind – there’s nothing quite like it. 

From tattoos to tears, those who come into contact with the highveld, the mountains, the water, the animals and the people, rarely leave unscathed by the mal d’africa. It is said though that the best cure is a good dose of coming back as often as one can… or never leaving. At least that’s what our most affected subjects tell us.