Category Archives: Uncategorized

On Emptiness

Uncategorized, ,

I miss the emptiness.

It’s pretty here. It’s green and lush and all the words that describe pretty places. It rains a lot. There is water. Lots of water. There are monkeys in the trees and so many birds.

But I miss the emptiness.

I never see the sky here. It’s mist and trees and mountains. Sometimes there’s a glimpse of the deep blue in winter or the clear blue in summer, but I never see the whole of the sky. The valley is picturesque. It’s picture-postcard pretty. But postcards are static. They’re the same picture. They stay the same. It’s that kind of pretty.

I miss the drama of empty landscapes. The road that goes on forever between rough, harsh bush, dotted with rocks and windmills and the occasional sheep far in the distance. I miss being able to see the distance.

I miss the rolling, empty grasslands with the thorn trees and the aloes and the dusty, dried-blood soil.

I miss the majesty of the craggy, Cape folded mountains soaring beyond the vineyards.

I miss the sea, the rough, dangerous, cold Atlantic with a million moods, every one more incomprehensible than the last.

My mind keeps drifting back to the summer grasslands and the long-horned acholi cattle silhouetted against the storm sky.

The green and the valley and rivers are pretty. The tree-green covered mountainsides of Korea and the big rivers were pretty, too. The same full green land and dull grey sky. Not steel-grey, blue-grey brooding storms. Just mist-grey. Overcast-grey.

The happiest places of the last nine months – places, not moments, because people can make the other places okay – but the happiest places have been just the places I’ve always loved. The grasslands of eastern Congo. The dryness of Eldoret before the rains. The Eastern Cape. My Eastern Cape. Driving past Cradock and Bedford and the winter-swept Nieu Bethesda. The “arse end of the world”, to quote Marguerite Poland, around Grahamstown. Even Stutt, with its forests, but set like a stone rippling grasslands in all directions. And those forests, like the African rainforests, so much richer and more complex.

I long for the endless, complex loneliness. The lush, green, pretty, cluttered beauty here is, well, pretty. But some days, against the backdrop of incessant soft, green rains, I wish, I just wish I was a million miles away.

Where people sing

Uncategorized, ,

It’s a cool morning in small town South Africa. The sun will probably come out later but for now the mist has yet to burn off and it is pleasant. As I sit at my desk, working, a breeze comes through my window. The breeze carries the sound of singing.

I never knew there were places where people didn’t sing. I don’t mean didn’t sing ever, but didn’t sing often. Not like here. Not like home. Places were singing was considered the preserve of expert singers, except, perhaps, for the odd karaoke experience. Then I moved to another country. In Korea was the incessant blaring K-pop. Shops here play music, too, but there it is K-pop everywhere and all the time. I hardly used an mp3-player before I left. There I missed music so much, I used it all the time.

The first protest I saw in Korea left me bemused. A forlorn group of people standing around with some signs. No movement no energy. I had to ask a local to confirm that it was a protest. Such a far cry from the powerful, energetic, at-times-terrifying, singing, dancing protests of my homeland. Music – singing, dancing – was traditionally a prelude to war here, in much the same way as the Maori war-dance now used by the New Zealand rugby team. Singing and dancing express anger and frustration, as well as sorrow, fear and joy.

I am walking to the shops on a Tuesday morning. Across the road, also walking, is a group of 50 or so Working-on-Fire staff. They walk quickly, strongly, almost as if they walk in formation. And as they walk, they sing. Not the monotonous chants I associate (perhaps wrongly) with American-movie soldiers. They sing beautiful, 3-part harmonies. Deep, rich, chocolaty bass voices blended with elegant alto and strong tenor. They sing effortlessly, weaving their voices together. A gardener weeding a pavement flower-bed stops to listen. This isn’t a performance, they just happen to be singing.

Perhaps I too often buy into exaggerated stereotype that associates Africa and song, but I have lived where K-pop counts as music: It thrills my soul to catch the drift of song on the wind, to be reminded, gently, joyfully, that I live where people sing.