African Vanielje on Nov 16 2007 at 6:10 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
I have had a really busy couple of days workwise and have also spent a lot of time recently reading all the fabulous Apple & Thyme posts, so late last night after work, tired and feeling homesick I sat down to see if I could reply to any Apple & Thyme comments, and to check my email. You know how my mom likes to send me little snippets. Well last night the surprise was a mail from my dad. He usually just tells my mom what to write.
He didn’t actually write anything, but he sent me a series of amazing pictures taken from their deck, looking out over the valley towards the mountains. The sea is at his back and behind the mountains, so stark and black that they look like cardboard silhouettes, the sun has hidden, but has not quite sunk beneath the waves in the other ocean. Yes, the other ocean. They live pretty close to Cape Point which means they wake up to sunrise over the Indian Ocean, and through the gap in the mountains they can see the reflection of the sunset in the Atlantic Ocean.
As I looked at the pictures, blowing them up large on my computer screen, my heart ached with the intensity of hundreds of remembered sunsets, the raw grandeur of Africa’s lifeblood draining into the ocean, staining the tides, no less powerful because it is a nightly occurence.
The pics are not in any way digitally enhanced or coloured. They are just of the point and shoot variety that is so common when you are faced with one of nature’s wonders and your only thought is ‘I have to try and get a photograph of that’. It is clear where I get my sense of drama and colour from. I went to sleep on a bed of African dreams…
…and this morning I woke up to a world enrobed in hoarfrost, each separate blade of grass and dewdrop, a moment frozen in time. The winter landscape equally dramatic in a very understated English way, (‘It’s like the whole world has faded to black and white mom’) with ancient trees and towers rising disembodied from the hovering mist. I felt a sharp pain in my chest as I acknowledged (to my daughter and myself) how beautiful it was and how lucky we are to live here. It could have just been trying to draw sub-zero oxygen into my shivering lungs, but it felt suspiciously like my homesickness of the night before.
My problem is, I have a home on both sides of the pond, and I have people I love on both sides of the pond. When I leave Africa it is a wrench, and on some levels a relief to get home. But when I am in England, Africa is always hovering at the edge of my dreams, both waking and sleeping. And the longer I am away the louder the beat of the drums in my blood.
I’ve been away too long now and can think of almost nothing but going home. And I accept this, but I also accept that it will be a temporary visit and, at least for now, my future lies in Somerset. I no longer have the feeling that I don’t quite belong in either place. I now feel like I belong in both places and that is a blessing as well as a curse. I have resigned myself to being forever divided, for a huge chunk of my heart stays deep in the red, red earth of the Dark Continent and the rest has found a home in the Summer Country. On good days these are the first two blessings I count.
Inge, this post is beautifully written and so emotional. I can really feel what you are feeling and the pictures futher invoke those emotions. I understand your never being reconciled and always being torn between the two places; I know that state of heart well.
What gorgeous photos. I love the Cape region. I was only there for 2 weeks, but it reached out to me, too. Such beauty. (Though the baboons kinda scared me.)
I lived outside of my home country for two years, and even though I did visit once in the middle, it was difficult–there’s nothing quite like being ‘home.’ So I understand, I do.
Mrs W, I agree. But home is also where family is and I have family (some not of the blood but family none the less) in both places. I have lived in England for nearly 15 years now, with a 2 year stint back in Cape Town, and I don’t think it gets easier. But you learn to deal with it a bit better
Beutifully put Inge.
When you write about frosted blades of grass, I too feel a stab of nostalgia, though most of the time I don’t feel like I miss England. But my roots are still there, I still feel English even though my children feel South African and I resonate to books set in England.
Here is home too now, the sunsets and mountains are also enticing roots being put down and I don’t know how England will seem to me when we return to visit next year – small and crowded I expect, but also part of me. Both places are integral to who I am now, a split personality with an ache where the two lives meet.
Terrific post and one that anyone who has lived as an expat understands to the depths of their soul. I’ve been going back and forth for many years, and I miss wherever I’m not. Your dad’s pictures are beautiful and dramatic, thank you for posting them.
Breathtaking, both the pics and the story!
Kit, it is comforting to know that someone exactly understands. This feeling is normally a dull ache, yet every now and again it intensifies until it takes centre stage. I think it is Christmas creeping up. My mom loves reading your blog by the way.
Laurie, I often wonder why we have condemned our daughter to this split life we have chosen. Her heart blossomed in Africa, although she was born in England, and she yearns for the open skies. In her worst days she stomps around flinging words at me like: ‘I don’t know why we have to live on this stupid little island anyway’. Yet she loves it here too and has an idyllic life. Perhaps if we had encouraged the African connection less hse would not feel so bereft, yet I can’t help thinking she would be less of a person for it. Only time will tell.
Lizet, thank you for those lovely words. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
oh thats just beautiful!!
ps: i’ve relocated to http://lapetiteboulangette.blogspot.com
hope u’ll ammend the link! thanks!
Between you and Kit you’ve almost got me in tears! Very beautiful post Inge and lovely that your Dad sent it.
think the onset of the cold weather has all of us African expats in the throes of a crisis of geography. I could not stop marvelling at the autumn colours this year – the entire view out of my bedroom window was a riot of yellow and copper. This is still a novelty to me after 7 years (on and off) in England. Growing up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, we simply did not have four seasons. We had summer and winter, and even that difference was not huge! And when I think of all the incredible opportunities that I have here – the two amazing concerts I’ve been to in the past 6 days (My Chemical Romance and Arcade Fire), the dizzying array of restaurants, the availability of cheap travel to the continent – I am perfectly content with my life here.
But then, like your daughter, I will wake up one morning and all I want to do is go home. I scowl at the relentless grey sky; I get absolutely despondent at the rude and unpleasant people on the Tube that can make or break your journey to work; I despair at my office that has no natural light at all; I curse the weather as I squelch to the station in the 5 o’clock darkness, missing my Volkswagen Golf back home.
I certainly don’t feel English (nor do I think I ever will), but I can pass almost unnoticed among them. So yes, I do feel at home here. I have made good friends and there are many things that I would miss if I leave. But England will never make my heart sing the way Africa does. I never land at Heathrow with the uncontrollable urge to laugh and hug the person next to me; I never feel exhilirated by the sound of rain on an English roof, nor terrified by a proper thunderstorm. And of course, I ache with the longing to see my two nephews growing up, and I miss the immediacy of being able to plonk myself down at my best friend’s or my sister-in-law’s kitchen table after a hard day at work for tea and sympathy. I yearn for the beaches and wide open spaces of Africa; but I know when I moved back there for 18 months in 2001, I cried every time I saw Central London on TV.
I always look with deep envy at people who seem rooted to their place in the world. The people who grew up in one place, made their friends, career, family and lives there and are happy living as the continuation of a long thread of their family and culture stretching back generations. I envy them because I no longer feel that rooted anywhere.
Amrita, thanks very much, I’ll change the link.
Amanda, I was nearly in tears when I opened the photos.
Jeanne, beautifully put. The grass is not greener, I just miss the other view sometimes.
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