A list: here and there.

1. It’s been ten days since I’ve been home. It’s been really hard, I can’t quite settle. Page observed, “you’re not here”. It’s true. Somewhere in my head I subconsciously think I’m going back, and doing so very soon. I sort of have a “just survive these next few days/weeks/etc until you go back.” Except I’m not going back. So I’m refusing to settle back in. I won’t clean, I don’t want to grocery shop and pay bills and life things. Cause I just have to survive until I leave again….right? It’s like I’ve been holding my breath since I’ve returned home. And I’m scared to death to exhale. If I exhale I’ll lose the Cape Town that is inside me. I don’t want to lose it, I don’t want to forget, I don’t want to become disconnected from this awakening I’ve experienced. If I exhale I lose my connection and I settle back into mundane routine without excitement and no future plans to go, to travel, to experience, to live. So that leaves me with not quite being here, but definitely not being there.

2. There is essentially no recycling in Cape Town. Everyone throws everything out, it kind of drove me crazy.

3. When your timing is such that you go to the ATM when the banks are changing out the money, you find yourself auspiciously standing next to two angry and aptly intimidating looking men who bear massive machine guns. Can’t quite say that’s ever happened in my world at home.

4. The car guards. They are self identified and self employed Capetonian men. They stand on the streets and help you park and watch your cars while you’re out and about doing whatever it is you’re doing. They fend off thieves and sketchy looking people. Some take their job seriously and take pride in doing good work; others are strung out or sleep on the job. They earn no wage, the only money they make is what you tip them. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes it’s R2 and on a good day, it’s R10.

5. I did not meet one single South African who speaks just one language. Everyone spoke at least two, but the majority of people speak four or so. Everyone speaks English and… English and Xhosa, English and Afrikaans, English and Zulu, Sesotho, German, French, Dutch. People that are thought to be uneducated and unemployable and with no potential in life speak five languages. How’s that for backwards? I was, and am, embarrassed to say I speak one language… I feel lazy and inferior.. and yet I’m the educated one?

6. One afternoon while volunteering at Place of Hope, I spilled some milk. I asked Jenni where I could find paper towels or a rag to wipe it up. She directed me to a rag after saying, “oh love, we don’t have such fancy things as paper towels.” I felt presumptuous and affluent and ungrateful and was mad at myself for so quickly, and without thought, assuming and not realizing how many things in my life are luxuries.

7. Let’s talk about Ubuntu.

Ubuntu: Human-ness. Community. Interconnectedness. I am because we are, we are because I am. You are because he is, he is because I am, I am because he is. Your dignity is my dignity, mine is yours. Her misfortune is our misfortune. It is what it means to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Everything I have been able to accomplish is because I have stood on the shoulders of others, of those who came before me. I want to live this way.

In the brilliant words of others (and borrowed from Marita's blog)---

“Africans have this thing called UBUNTU. It is about the essence of being human, it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being able to go the extra mile for the sake of others. We believe that a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with with yours. When I dehumanise you, I inexorably dehumanise myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms and therefore you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in belonging”.
~~Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"Ubuntu" (oo-boon-too) n. Zulu or Xhosa word, a traditional African belief. Ubuntu is a term for humaneness, for caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation. “Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, "Yu u nobuntu"; "Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu." Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. … We say, "A person is a person through other persons." … A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from No Future Without Forgiveness