Miss Indiana Jones

“I went straight to the Amazon,” says Rhodes University student, Tansy Bensusan, describing her arrival in South America. “I lived in a tree house,” she adds with a grin. “And I had no idea what I was in for.”

Waitressing in a bar, somewhere in the UK, to save up some money; that is the usual description of a gap year abroad. However, for 20-year-old Tansy, a ‘gap year’ meant something else. It meant teaching English to children, learning Spanish in the process and embarking on a “life journey”.

“When I compare the little girl who climbed on the aeroplane to the one that came back, there is a huge difference,” she says as she places her delicate hands in her lap. “It’s always a life journey when you go to a different place, but especially a place which is so far removed and separated from what you’re used to.”

Tansy was born and raised in the bustling city of Johannesburg. After matriculating, she finished a CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults) course which qualified her as an ‘English as foreign language’ teacher. It was this course which changed Tansy’s initial plan to teach and save money in Spain. “We [the CELTA teachers] had a teaching practice with refugees from all over Africa and this changed my perspective of the world. This made me realise that I’d rather be volunteering somewhere, instead of just working.”

Tansy decided to set off to Ecuador, where she spent most of her two and a half year break. She volunteered at a place in the Amazon named Arutam, where she lived with a tribe in a tree house, did rainforest conservation and taught English at the local school. She defines this experience as heart warming but also very tough. “I became a pro with the machete, wore cargo pants, sunglasses and had a cigarette dangling from my mouth,” she jokes as she purses her red lips. “I felt like Indiana Jones every single day.”

After her two months in the Amazon, Tansy moved to the Andes Mountains to teach English and art in a town called Salasaka. The people of Salasaka spoke Kichwa, a traditional South American language. It was at this school, Escuela Katitawa, where she met a fellow art teacher and her current partner, Javier Quinapanta.

Tansy did not only fall head over heels in love with this 32-year-old artist, but also with all the children at the school. “I felt like I was finally doing something worthwhile,” she says with a warm smile. “And I got so much more than I’ve ever given them,” she continues, “I mean, what did they go away with? A little bit of English.”

Even though Tansy’s visa expired and she “accidently” became illegal twice, she managed to find a way to stay in the country which had found a special place in her heart. She grabbed every opportunity, from working on an organic farm near Malchingi, to moving to Javier’s hometown Ambato, known as “the city of fruit and flowers”, surrounded by volcanoes. The couple also went travelling in Peru for three months, found secret routes up to Machu Picchu and spent New Year’s at an oasis in a desert.

Tansy explains how much she has learnt from Javier and his background, as they grew up in completely different circumstances. “He was taken as an 11-year-old and put in a mechanics apprenticeship. He had to help earn money for his family as he grew up,” Tansy says with admiration in her voice. “He’s the most educated person I have ever met, yet he has never finished school.”

She leans back in her chair and looks at the hand-made ring on her finger, one of her own creations. “I’ve learnt so much from Ecuador. It brought me straight back to the basics of everything,” she says as she plays with a loose strand of her dark blond hair. “Coming back to Johannesburg was a big shock. I felt like I didn’t belong here.” 

She felt like she was part of a community in Ecuador, compared to Johannesburg with its high walls. “Nobody associates with anybody,” she says softly. Even though it is a 48km drive from Grahamstown and Rhodes, it is no wonder that Tansy and Javier now choose to live in Bathurst, the tiny Eastern Cape village with its “crazy” locals. Javier decided to follow Tansy back to South Africa, shortly after she returned home.                                                                                             

Now it is only the selfless life back in Ecuador which Tansy misses the most. “Living in a western society, there’s a big emphasis on mine mine mine. I must rush, I must dash. I need to make money and there’s no sharing,” she explains. “In Ecuador, I had the poorest and most desperate of people invite me in to have rice with them in their home.”

“I was living a much simpler life,” Tansy adds with a nostalgic look in her eye. She says the most important thing travelling taught her, was to share. “It seems like a nursery school lesson, sharing,” she says with a slight smile. “But you know what? We forget sometimes.”

Tansy and her favourite student at the school Escuela Katitawa in the Andes Mountains. Photo: Javier Quinapanta