Little things still turn me around. It’s May and the winter rains are on their way, but I never anticipated anything resembling an autumn. Still, we were out on a drive the other day and there it was: an entire line of shady yellow trees and a carpet of leaves along the road. It would pale in comparison to a New England fall, but it was still there: legitimate autumn.
It’s so odd to be standing at the other side of this semester. Some things are still the same as they were from the beginning. We still have walks along the beach and there are still braais; I still eat way more Cadbury bars than is healthy or even sane. There’s been many rounds of Phase 10 and long afternoons in Cornerstone’s Sugarbowl, laughing and talking and being. Lindo still gives me a goodnight hug every evening at nine and Ode still teases me about every male that walks through the door. Those constants have been so precious and comforting.
But the weather’s changed; it’s finally getting chilly enough for Joelle to light the fire in the lounge at night and I’m using my raincoat for the first time since our Jo-burg weekend. And the world looks entirely different than it did in January. Cape Town is suddenly uglier and more strikingly beautiful after long runs in leafy green suburbs and a week’s stay in the townships. There are subtleties built into nuances that I couldn’t even recognize when I first arrived here. Now I can’t help but see them everywhere. What does it mean, that we get so many stares when taking the taxis as white girls? What opinion do I, as a post-apartheid American, have a right to give about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? What did it mean to be Jewish in South Africa, to have emigrated away from the Halocaust and fallen into the lap of apartheid instead? How can there be so much continental solidarity in Africa (especially with the approaching World Cup)—and yet so much discrimination against Congolese and Zimbabwean refugees? Why is there such a disconnect between academia and the grit of people’s actual lives? And—this one I really want the answer to—is racism the unforgivable sin? How can you look past the ugly glare of it and still see a human being’s worth underneath?
I didn’t have any of these thoughts or questions in January. I’ve been picking them up and warming them in my hands and pocketing them to pull out later, when I’m alone and have time to sit and stare at them. Funny, that I expected to walk away from this semester a wiser human being. Instead I feel entirely stripped of any understanding I thought I had before. It’s not even just the way that I look at the world around me that’s changed; it’s my conception of myself as well. I am a child of God, but I have no idea what I look like anymore; my limitations are shifting and I think I’m being pulled through new dimensions both mentally and emotionally (if there is even a distinction between the two). There’s something like vertigo in realizing just how small you are, and how little you know—and of what little consequence your knowing or not knowing really is, at the end of the day. But it’s brought a kind of release, too, that feels entirely safe and warm and free. I wonder if I am actually a fuller person for the un-knowing that’s happened to me these last few months.
I have now lived almost one-fifth of my life in Africa: three and a half years of infancy and four months of this strange un-knowing. I suppose the one thing that I think I understand is this: that I could live the rest of my life wandering the continent, and I would be no closer to looking it in the face and knowing it fully. Coming here, I kept waiting for moments of This is Africa, when suddenly it would all dawn on me, and it all would fall succinctly into place with everything I’ve anticipated and dreamed of and expected. But it’s all Africa, and none of it is Africa, not entirely. What a joy, to walk the same mile to school every morning and never grasp it. And how incredible, that I can live alongside another human being for four months and still be surprised by her in the last week. I think I could fall in love with letting go, if it meant the joy of daily rediscovery.
I fly home today. In two hours I have to say goodbye to the majority of all the incredible, wonderful people who have stretched me and challenged me and welcomed me, and then tomorrow at noon I have to say goodbye to the eleven people who have walked beside me through it all. Funny then, that I feel like I’ve only begun everything. I am only just starting to really explore this country, these people, this history. It’s going to be a difficult re-entry, I think, but I have to remember that this next chapter of the story is just as much a part of this experience as the first weeks of bright-eyed wonder in January.
There’s nothing much left to say, except that these four months have been little less than transformative. How can I be anything short of grateful and humbled and moved?
Sala kakuhle, South Africa. Stay well.
