Alive in South Africa

Alive! The word pops into my head as we enter Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Air­port. Ironic really, isn’t it, for a coun­try with one of the high­est crime rates in the world. Yet I feel it. Sense it. Am reminded of a friend who says he comes alive every time he returns – feels bor­ing, bland and dis­con­nected for weeks in his new coun­try, Aus­tralia every time he goes back.

‘An elec­tric­ity in the air’ is how another friend describes it. Peo­ple seem to laugh more, live more.

These thoughts res­onate as my daugh­ter and I arrive jaded yet expec­tant. We col­lect cling-wrapped suit­cases and plas­tic pip­ing con­tain­ing an art can­vas paintstak­ingly painted by my mother in law for my niece’s wed­ding gift and embark on our flight to Durban.

On arrival in Dur­ban, we load lug­gage onto trol­ley, relieved and mildly sur­prised every­thing is still intact. We meet my pre­cious par­ents who are so, so happy to see us. It seems like yes­ter­day yet it is years since our last visit. My friend’s Ital­ian in-laws are there too – col­lect­ing gifts and a watch need­ing repair from the bow­els of my cling-wrapped suit­case. In the com­mo­tion of unwrap­ping suit­case, embrac­ing par­ents and search­ing for gifts, I leave the plas­tic pip­ing car­ry­ing paint­ing in the mid­dle of Arrivals. I remem­ber my con­cen­tra­tion lapse halfway to my parent’s home. The joy of arriv­ing is tainted by the con­cern that I will never see the paint­ing again.

Sur­prise! Eupho­ria! They have found the paint­ing. Early the next morn­ing, my dad and I brave the hour’s jour­ney back to the air­port to claim my “ama-pipeline” con­tain­ing paint­ing. I acknowl­edge the pip­ing looks like a bazooka and mar­vel no-one called the bomb squad.

We repeat the hair-raising jour­ney back home to my parent’s pic­turesque lit­tle retire­ment vil­lage lined with neat homes and colour­ful gardens.

The views are sen­sa­tional. I mar­vel at how green and lush every­thing looks. Plants grow fast. There is broc­coli in the gar­den, a pro­lific crop of bright red pep­perdews (which my dad later bot­tles for me), green pep­pers are ready for pick­ing and a pro­fu­sion of pink dahlias bloom in the front gar­den. My mother care­lessly tosses seeds into a flowerbed of rich, dark soil and they sprout within days. I learn the bright orange flow­ers that joy­fully spill over a trel­lis in the back yard are Black-eyed Susans. I won­der if they’ll grow in my dry shale gar­den back home.

I pho­to­graph old oak trees and mag­nif­i­cent liq­uid amber’s dressed in their bright red autumn wardrobe. We take a walk within an exten­sive bound­ary of elec­tric fenc­ing and encounter impala, bles­bok and zebra. The grass smells sweet. I am reminded of my youngest son who when asked what he loved most about South Africa, thought for a moment and then said: “The smell.” At the time a more cyn­i­cal me won­dered what he meant. I now understand.

A warm, friendly neigh­bour deliv­ers freshly baked car­rot muffins and says she’ll leave cheese puffs at the front door early on Sun­day morn­ing. Ran­dom acts of kind­ness are a hall­mark of this lit­tle village.

Green rolling moun­tains. The How­ick Falls – gaily dec­o­rated with colour­ful, newly washed blan­kets at its sum­mit. Where else in the world?

Every­where are polit­i­cal posters mark­ing April’s elec­tions. Zuma is pasted on the town’s pil­lars and posts – his beam­ing face even cov­ers an entire elec­tric­ity box like Zuma wallpaper.

My daugh­ter is amused by a ‘Vote for the Tiger’ poster and takes a pho­to­graph to show her broth­ers back home. “He looks far too friendly to be a tiger,” she says of a grin­ning Rajbanzi.

We travel deep into KZN for my niece’s nup­tials. I meet my beau­ti­ful sis­ters, my nephews and nieces. Every­thing is warm and fuzzy.

The wed­ding scene is breath-taking. A stark white mar­quee has a back­drop of impos­ing moun­tains, a dam com­plete with ducks and a green field of inquis­i­tive cows. The local tight-knit farm­ing com­mu­nity pitches in to help – arranges flow­ers, helps set out tables and an all-important dance floor. A gar­den arch is trans­formed with foliage and baby’s breath. The mar­quee is bedecked with white drapes, fairy lights and chan­de­liers. Gen­er­ous urns of flow­ers spill out from cor­ners, green hydrangeas, roses and soft pink pro­teas add sub­tle splashes of colour to crisp white table set­tings. My daugh­ter and I help tie sage green chif­fon sashes around smartly dressed white chairs.

The day arrives and the weather is per­fect. An exquis­ite bride and hand­some groom exchange vows under a fab­ric fes­tooned arch. The bride sobs when it comes to say “I do” and we all cry with her.

Pho­tographs are taken under an old oak tree. A three-layered dense, dark choco­late cake dec­o­rated with golden spun sugar and choco­late cup cakes is cut out in the after­noon sun­shine on the edge of the dam. A herd of curi­ous cows offer their congratulations.

My daugh­ter is enrap­tured. She learns what it means to party coun­try style and later dances the night away in her flower girl cham­pagne silk dress and Ugg boots. It is 1am before she finally gives in and falls into an exhausted heap. The coun­try rev­ellers party on.

In a sober moment, I chat to my nephews about leav­ing South Africa. Would they? They all say no, never. Bright, young and highly edu­cated, they are pre­pared to work abroad but actu­ally leave for­ever? Leave surf­ing in Llan­dudno? Their friends? Their unique lifestyle? Not pos­si­ble. They are opti­mistic, real­is­tic — full of life and hope. They claim most of their friends are too. Yet they acknowl­edge the road ahead is tough. ‘White, male and bot­tom of the pile,’ they laugh. So they sim­ply study longer and harder, con­fi­dent this will give them the edge in a biased job mar­ket. I so want them to suc­ceed and believe strongly that they will.

The elderly appear more prag­matic, slightly less opti­mistic. A sage farmer tells me, ‘If you live here, you can’t com­plain, you stand in queues if you have to. You adapt.’

The next day my brother-in-law shows me the foun­da­tions for his new home in the foothills of Mt Curry. I gasp at the stun­ning views of moun­tains and grass­land. The plans are in his head, not on paper. Find­ing a builder was easy. He sought out a builder who had built his last farm­house at least 18 years ago.

‘I put word out in the Transkei that I wanted to build a house and he arrived at my front door five days later.’ No coun­cil stip­u­la­tions or regulations.

I remem­ber the rig­ma­role in get­ting our own build­ing plans passed through coun­cil, the red tape and petty for­mal­i­ties. The ‘fauna spot­ter catcher’ a neigh­bour was required to hire so he could scout for ani­mals in gum trees before allow­ing clear­ance for a build­ing enve­lope. The fact that we require an expen­sive per­mit every time we want to burn any­thing at all. And yet, through it all, I am grate­ful every­thing works like a well oiled, pre­dictable yet effi­cient machine.

I leave the wed­ding venue full and sat­u­rated with fam­ily. My daugh­ter writes in her jour­nal that “mom sobbed again”.

We stop at an Under­berg farm stall to buy mazava­roo and a grainy loaf of home-baked bread. The vil­lage is brim­ming with scrag­gly Splashy Fen rev­ellers in need of a greasy break­fast and a hot shower

At a local mall, I later dis­cover Mr Price Home. I almost buy two over-sized cush­ions but san­ity pre­vails and I pur­chase two vases instead – one a deep red, one white. They are both made in South Africa, not China.

I re-introduce my daugh­ter to Nik-Naks, Frito’s and Big Korn Bites. We load up on old favourites to take back to her broth­ers and father.

I’m in a happy bub­ble, an impen­e­tra­ble and nos­tal­gic laager. Yet every now and then some­thing dark and sin­is­ter invades – tragic acci­dents caused by over-crowded buses, over-tired dri­vers and erratic dri­ving. A news story reveals the intrud­ers that killed a six year old boy and left his mother in a coma have been sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment. So too have iconic muso Lucky Dube’s killers. The jails must be full to over­flow­ing, I ponder.

The crime is insid­i­ous, evil – a deadly viper that heed­lessly invades the beauty, peace and seren­ity. It unset­tles me.

My dear friend dri­ves an hour to visit. She hasn’t aged a bit – still gor­geous after all these years. We chat as though we saw each other yes­ter­day. I show her my pho­tographs sat­u­rated with scenery shots.

‘The coun­try­side is achingly beau­ti­ful,’ I drama­tise. Then I am slightly embar­rassed by her bemused and vaguely amused expression.

‘I sup­pose we take it for granted,’ she kindly acknowledges.

I chat to a dear old Cape Town friend for an hour on the phone – I long to see her in per­son, to see the expres­sions on her face. Maybe next time.

I visit a pre­cious old school friend — com­fort­ingly the same. She still has the same gra­cious home and envi­able gar­den – a warm and gen­er­ous hus­band and two beau­ti­ful chil­dren. They are off to board­ing school – he’s lov­ing life, his sport – she lives for her horses.

Too soon we have to return home. The drive to the air­port seems even more hair-raising than the last. The truck strike is over so all the heavy weights are on the road. A 20-ton truck thun­ders past – we’re doing 120 km an hour so heaven knows how fast he’s trav­el­ling. I am slightly fear­ful we will not make it.

We arrive safely. I try not to cry. I remind my tear­ful mother that we are so for­tu­nate we are not refugees flee­ing our coun­try with­out hope of ever see­ing fam­ily again. ‘We’re actu­ally really lucky,’ I con­vince us both. ‘We’ll come back soon,’ I add opti­misti­cally. It works, sort of.

This time I am tear­ful but not sob­bing. We have barely passed through secu­rity when my daugh­ter is appre­hended and her hand lug­gage searched. She has mis­tak­enly put Gran’s pink­ing shears in her pen­cil case. Cus­toms kindly allow us to return them to Gran. I am grate­ful for the lighter moment. Later in Jo’burg I too am forced to hand over my booty – pick­led pep­perdews lov­ingly bot­tled by my dad are con­fis­cated. I vow to squeeze them into my suit­case next time.

The flight back to Bris­bane via Sin­ga­pore is inter­minably long.

My sons and hus­band meet us at the air­port – we are embraced, feel loved, missed. In the weeks we’ve been away my teenaged son has grown taller than me. His younger brother has almost learned how to whistle.

We return to our home among the gum trees. I step out onto our veranda; breathe the fresh night air, thank­ful for the herald­ing of cooler weather. It has rained while I was gone and in the light of the moon, I see that the grass is unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally green. The impos­ing ghost gums sur­round­ing our home like sen­tinels are stripped of their bark. It is a dif­fer­ent, still unfa­mil­iar beauty, I muse.

I stroke our faith­ful golden retriever’s downy ears – and note she doesn’t appear to have realised we left at all. The guinea pigs have survived.

I notice my hus­band has folded all the wash­ing. ‘We even cleaned out your car,’ says my son.

Home. Yet the yearn­ing remains. A lit­tle piece of me for­ever missing.

Copy­right © 2009 by Lois Nicholls