Welcome to the 8th instalment in my expat interview series. Today you will meet the lovely and interesting Heather, who is in Jo’burg, South Africa.
It has been an interesting ride so far, both for myself and for the interviewees and casual bystanders, it seems. I’ve received a lot of feedback for this little impromptu project- apparently I’ve made a lot of people think. I had selfishly started this as a way to get my own conflicted feelings in order (i.e. oh, please tell me I’m not the only one with mixed feelings about this whole expat gig!). I’m short sighted that way. Apparently this has been therapeutic for many. I’m glad.
Today’s interview is close to my heart as it follows a move and a life I very nearly had.
In the middle of the Groot Karoo
In my mid-20s, I thought my future lay in South Africa. I had a three year relationship with a South African that I had met while living in London in the late 1990s, and during our time together in the UK we went back to Cape Town several times for births and weddings, including one final attempt at moving there in early 2000, which lasted half a year before we quietly broke up and I returned to Canada to figure out my next move (which turned out to be 6 years in Turkey).
That was just over a decade ago. I haven’t been back since, though I can still recite dirty poetry in Afrikaans and all the words to My Sarie Marais and I can still vividly recall the bird sounds that woke me every morning.
I can also remember how isolated and lonely I often felt, being fully immersed in someone else’s family, culture, religion and language (everyone around me spoke Afrikaans and were proudly Huegenot or Boer, devoutly Dutch Reformed). I lived with his parents out in the northern suburbs. His brother and one of his sisters were also still living at home, although they were in their late 20s. They were boisterous and intense.
I couldn’t get a work permit, so in between under-the-table stints working as a sound and lighting technician for my best friend’s theatre company (we did children’s shows by day and satirical cabaret by night), I was stuck out in the leafy white suburbs by myself. White people (though not me) had cars (strangely enough, the cars were generally also white) and public transport was difficult from where we were. Also, the minibus taxis at that time were engaged in some sort of gang warfare against the public buses, with bombs and shootings and whatnot.
I spent a lot of time watching Egoli and Isidingo with Sophie the maid, drinking sweet milky tea, dunked with rusks. I read a lot of magazines in both languages. I took the dog for a lot of walks around the very long, leafy, quiet block. The dog, a lovely border collie called Einstein, was bilingual in English and Afrikaans thanks to my boyfriend’s tutelage, and we got along well.
I could speak passable Afrikaans by the time I moved to South Africa, thanks to the huge numbers of Afrikaaners I knew and lived with in London. My accent, I was told, was quite good (thanks to growing up bilingual in French- I could roll my Rs appropriately) and my vocabulary and grammar relatively accurate. However, when I spoke Afrikaans, everyone said I sounded angry. Even when I wasn’t angry (and I generally wasn’t angry at all), it came out that way.
During school holidays (my boyfriend was doing his Masters degree), we took road trips around the country, up to Namibia by VW Beetle, camping, and over to Port Elizabeth via the Garden Route (also camping). We were quite broke. His parents insisted we carry a cell phone and a gun in the glove compartment. Just because, well, you know…it’s just not safe. We never once opened the glove compartment during any of our extended road trips.
I loved the Northern Cape. I loved the quiet, dry emptiness of the land. I loved just driving around. I felt surprisingly happy when
A birds nest, on a road trip up to Namibia
we were out there, hours from anywhere, driving on an empty road in the desert. We played impromptu games of cricket in the middle of the road. We posed, poised to leap over unguarded cliffs on blind corners of gravel roads. We drank warm white wine from Paarl from coffee mugs. We ate tins of chakalaka with our cheap instant noodles. My left arm was tanned dark from my open passenger window. I felt healthy and sane on the road. I didn’t feel healthy or sane back in Cape Town.
Which is why, a dozen years later, I’m in China doing other things. Life moves along that way.
Today’s interview is with Heather, who is in Johannesburg. She is doing what I wish I had done when I was living in SA- she’s delving deeply into her city, into what surrounds her.
Her blog has brought back a lot of memories, in particular the memories of how I had hoped my time there could have been.
Where I felt stifled and isolated, she’s participating and interacting. She’s engaged where I had felt detached.
Maybe if I hadn’t been stuck out in the suburbs, miles from anything, carless, frustrated, I’d have felt better; maybe if my Afrikaans had been better, I’d have felt less frustrated and stupid. Maybe if I had been older, I could have handled it better (I was 25 when I left). I don’t know.
Ladies and gentlemen, the formidable and admirable Heather of 2Summers. *applause*
Success after consuming her first litchi fruit
