Ishay Govender-Ypma: What I learned when I gave up Law to travel the world

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It isn't always easy to take the road less travelled, especially when it means letting go of a high-power corporate job to enter the world of freelance travel and food journalism. But for Ishay Govender-Ypma, switching careers has brought new joys, new worlds to explore, and new responsibilities as a teller of stories.

By Ishay Govender-Ypma*

Strange things happen when you write a blog, I discovered five years ago. Even stranger, when the blog wins a national award. A world not accessible to civilians, which is what you were before, cracks a fraction and into Narnia you step.

Instead of fantastical creatures, there are celebrities, instead of snow there's networking, and instead of witches, there are "freebies" of wine and meals and vouchers, that aren't free at all, of course. And there are television and magazine shoots, in your own kitchen. Dreamy, eh? If you're unaccustomed to all of this and used to questioning everything (I was that "but, why?" child; my unlucky parents), it's bizarre. It's understandably transient. It's fun, too.

Just a few years before this, I was a practising attorney with a post-grad in commercial law but a heart and snout for human rights and social justice issues. I was skirting on the wrong side of burnt-out, and refusing to admit it. I dreamt of three things: to sleep a full night, to have time to read an entire novel in a month or two, and to see beyond the traffic-facing windows of my office. After working through the guilt of not being productive for every waking moment, I gambled on all three and paused long enough to fall in love with a decent man, somewhere in Sea Point.

Unsentimental being that he is, the man convinced me to set-up nest in an old suburb outside the hum and buzz of my coffee-culture scene. To exact revenge, I now drag him and his office on assignments abroad, the catch being he has to pay his own way. It's a tough life. This is supposedly the part in the fairy tale where everyone lives happily ever after. Then my own career journey, which was starting to settle, took a turn, and to this day, it's snaking into thickets unknown.

I have been writing for my entire life, but it was only after the blog that I allowed myself to write for formal publications. It's the curse of under-selling, but the self knows when it's ready.

From recipe blogs with travel anecdotes, the writing moved into service pieces, food and food anthropology, and travel stories for local and international publications. Increasingly, the focus is on culture and social justice stories. Travel editors often say that stories are about the place primarily. But without the people, the places are characterless vacuums, devoid of the edge of love and loss, colour and chaos. I always try to structure travel around meeting and mingling with locals, as unobtrusively as possible.

Naturally, I am concerned about the ethical responsibility we have in relaying travel narratives, particularly the African story. Environmental writers have ensured we know about the repercussions of our years of recklessness. Can travel writers say the same about the villages, peoples, cultures, religions, food and history of this land? Who should be telling the stories, and how? It's true we who live here have a stake in the concept of African-ness, but it is less true that the stake is equal.

For far too long Africa's narrative has been skewed by colonisation. The South African tourism industry, and media, for whom transformation has been woefully slow, must work with us in how we frame these stories. Will we perpetually propagate the imagery and tales of dusty poor black children with shiny-faced white tourists beaming centrally, as I see in countless social media posts?

Are we willing to broaden the scope to allow local black people to tell the African stories in this industry too? Is the space safe enough yet for us to have this conversation, and why the need to clarify this? Who will be willing to give up a freebie or media trip to mentor and allow other voices in?

This is new territory as far as I can tell, and our road ahead will be lengthy and uncomfortable. Or are we out of time, in how we've allowed attitudes to become entrenched, and a status quo to solidify? If law and travel blogging have taught me one thing on the road to journalism, it's that patience is essential, but leveraging the voice, when the situation demands, even more so.

• Ishay Govender-Ypma is a freelance travel and food journalist, who wisely abandoned a career in commercial law in the pursuit of cultural immersion and air miles. Selected a 2014 Mail & Guardian top young South African for contributions to media, she wanders the earth tirelessly, gathering stories, ingredients and second-hand books that threaten to take over her house. In the case of the ingredients, expiry dates are merely a guide, she insists, and uses them liberally in exotic dishes to feed friends (and foes) as she thrills them with tales of desert, mountain and urban explorations. She spreads misery and joy in equal measure with her micro-stories on Instagram and Twitter. She rallies for social justice and will patiently debate until oppressive and conservative minds are opened.
• This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.