As much as it amazes and pains me to type this, I have to begin to deal with the fact that I am on the home stretch of my African adventure. I feel sunshine when I wake up in the morning and walk home from dance class while it is still light out and while I smile, smile, smile at this approach of summer; it is also a soft reminder that at some point, I need to go home. And, as an attempt to be the incredibly mature homework-oriented-future -knowing-no -candy-for-breakfast-and-hair-brushing individual that I am not, I have compiled a list of just a few things that I have learned over the past couple months. You know, so I can tell people if they ask. Or remind myself if I forget. Because I guess that’s one of the things I am scared of when I think about leaving this place. Forgetting what I realized I came here to get.
1. Things are worse than they seem if you are cold or tired. This was something that I figured out when Africa was new and winter was a little colder than I anticipated. I realized that if I took a step back, took a mental survey and understood that this winter thing really wasn’t a joke, or that sleep hadn’t come so quickly the night before, then whatever I was thinking was so completely awful at that point, probably wasn’t so bad. Its displaced stress. Take a nap; get a sweatshirt and its good looking up.
2. A lot of times, you can laugh instead of cry. This seemed to be the mantra for me and my beautiful roommate these past few months. Those night where you turn your oven on and leave it open just to try and warm up the kitchen, or when you eat oatmeal for dinner again because you don’t really know how to cook anything else, or when the electricity runs out right when you need it because apparently leaving the oven on to warm up the house uses a lot of power, those were times where the laugh/cry choice was in order. And most of the time, we learned to laugh. Because most of the time, it really is kind of funny.
3. Differences get subtler the more you understand them. So when ‘pap’ is served for dinner, you start to realize it is kind of like mashed potatoes. And when some asks you “Wasswera sei?” it maybe could sound like “What’s there to say?” which is obviously a complex way of asking, “How are you?” And then there you go. African languages are figured out.
But in all honesty, the longer a talk I have with someone, the more their accent fades, and the more familiar their words seem and sometimes, I can forget that we are so different and from completely different worlds. And maybe my accent fades to them; too, as we both start to understand. Maybe things aren’t so different after all.
4. You never really regret the times you decide to dance. But you almost always regret the times you don’t. There is a lot of dancing going on in Africa. So if steps are clumsy the first time around, there is always a chance for round two. Most people aren’t looking to be impressed. Most just want someone to dance along with. In the mighty words of my fearless Xhosa dance teacher: “If you don’t get up, and dance together like a village, well, then that’s fine, but don’t come crying to me when you have your ancestors speak to you and say, “Why you weren’t up there dancing?” I must say, I can’t exactly picture my ancestors saying that, but I think they’d be proud. Confused, maybe, of how their lineage made it all the way to Africa. But proud. Because, o Cape Town, I danced.
5. And one final thing in this short list of what to remember when I return home. An old Zulu adage says something like this when it’s translated: “A path is made by walking.” So I’ll keep walking. Walking on back to my apartment for the night. Walking into my final weeks in South Africa. Walking into my old life back at home, but with a fuller heart and a bigger mind. And maybe one day, God willing, walking right back onto this African dust again.
1. Things are worse than they seem if you are cold or tired. This was something that I figured out when Africa was new and winter was a little colder than I anticipated. I realized that if I took a step back, took a mental survey and understood that this winter thing really wasn’t a joke, or that sleep hadn’t come so quickly the night before, then whatever I was thinking was so completely awful at that point, probably wasn’t so bad. Its displaced stress. Take a nap; get a sweatshirt and its good looking up.
2. A lot of times, you can laugh instead of cry. This seemed to be the mantra for me and my beautiful roommate these past few months. Those night where you turn your oven on and leave it open just to try and warm up the kitchen, or when you eat oatmeal for dinner again because you don’t really know how to cook anything else, or when the electricity runs out right when you need it because apparently leaving the oven on to warm up the house uses a lot of power, those were times where the laugh/cry choice was in order. And most of the time, we learned to laugh. Because most of the time, it really is kind of funny.
3. Differences get subtler the more you understand them. So when ‘pap’ is served for dinner, you start to realize it is kind of like mashed potatoes. And when some asks you “Wasswera sei?” it maybe could sound like “What’s there to say?” which is obviously a complex way of asking, “How are you?” And then there you go. African languages are figured out.
But in all honesty, the longer a talk I have with someone, the more their accent fades, and the more familiar their words seem and sometimes, I can forget that we are so different and from completely different worlds. And maybe my accent fades to them; too, as we both start to understand. Maybe things aren’t so different after all.
4. You never really regret the times you decide to dance. But you almost always regret the times you don’t. There is a lot of dancing going on in Africa. So if steps are clumsy the first time around, there is always a chance for round two. Most people aren’t looking to be impressed. Most just want someone to dance along with. In the mighty words of my fearless Xhosa dance teacher: “If you don’t get up, and dance together like a village, well, then that’s fine, but don’t come crying to me when you have your ancestors speak to you and say, “Why you weren’t up there dancing?” I must say, I can’t exactly picture my ancestors saying that, but I think they’d be proud. Confused, maybe, of how their lineage made it all the way to Africa. But proud. Because, o Cape Town, I danced.
5. And one final thing in this short list of what to remember when I return home. An old Zulu adage says something like this when it’s translated: “A path is made by walking.” So I’ll keep walking. Walking on back to my apartment for the night. Walking into my final weeks in South Africa. Walking into my old life back at home, but with a fuller heart and a bigger mind. And maybe one day, God willing, walking right back onto this African dust again.
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