Other people

Friends

Preparing to move half-way across the world (quite literally) can be a little daunting. Particularly when everything keeps going pear-shaped (and elephant-shaped and emu-shaped and penguin-shaped). A friend was describing his experience of a similar move and mentioned that it’s hard to visualise being in another country that is completely different to your own. No matter how much you learn about the place, you cannot truly picture what it’s like to be there because it is completely unknown. Which makes it more complicated to prepare yourself psychologically. Moving to Cape Town was an upheaval but I already knew what Cape Town looked like and ‘felt like’ and had friends there and places that were cool to go.

The closest to my current dilemma was probably going to varsity for the first time. Those who didn’t go away to varsity will not have had this experience. In fact, those who didn’t attend a residential university probably can’t understand that incredible other-ness of the first few days of varsity. The night before I first went to Rhodes, I spent the evening at a typical Stutt party with friends. Then I got into the car with my folks and headed off to Grahamstown. I’d been there before, of course. On a school trip in Standard 3. And briefly to visit the varsity in matric. But that was it. I didn’t know the place. I didn’t know what to expect. I remember feeling quite terrified. Everything else about those first few days is a bit of a blur. A snippet here, a scene there. I remember sitting on the grass in a circle ‘getting to know each other’, I think with one of the House Comm, but I can’t remember which bit of grass. I remember the early-morning wake-up to be serenaded by the boys’ reses. Which day? Which reses? I can picture sitting in the common room drinking coffee. I remember feeling terrified and exhausted. I remember being out, until 2 in the morning one night, with some people from res and some of the people I’d known years before in Queenstown, and then walking up the hill with someone. Candice? I’m not even sure where we were. The Rat, I guess. But it’s not clear. I remember meeting a boy. On Valentine’s Day. The memories are like a mixed up pile of old photographs. Later, of course, I settled very happily and have many, many happy memories from Grahamstown, all of which fit into somewhat more logically organised chronological order. In many ways it became home and I still feel comfortable there. But the beginning was terrifying

Going overseas feels like that. I suppose partly because it’s the first time in many, many years that I’m committing to being somewhere I don’t know for a significant period of time. And because I don’t know anyone. I’m pretty shy at first and not particularly good at meeting new people. I’m bad at beginnings. I quite like to be familiar with the place I’m in. I suppose it’s a control thing. I hate feeling at the mercy of fate and, well, the mercy of strangers. I know the kindness of strangers is fantastic and inspirational and supposedly what makes us human – but I hate to be dependent on it. The idea of getting on a plane to another country doesn’t scare me. The idea of landing in another country does. I fixate on the little things – what will the airport look like, who will meet me, how will I get from the airport to my apartment, how will I know how to get from my apartment to the school. I get nervous about the little things. I get nervous about being out of control. And when I am by myself, I get more and more nervous. I start to panic.

Short-term travelling is less scary. Less scary, I suppose because you don’t need to be competent – because the loss of control is unavoidable and, to some extent, the point. There is no sense of having to settle and fit in and know your way around. The alienation of travel is a shelter – because you are only passing through, you don’t need to know your way around or be in control or know people.
This past week, I’ve spent time with friends. Some of them have known me since those first crazy varsity O-week days. Some know me from work, often from work-related travelling together. Many have travelled with me to various debating events. Some have been travelling companions on recent meanderings. All of them are close and important and with each of them I have shared some new beginning or experience. And their company and advice and the sheer joy of laughing together make the prospect of a totally foreign new beginning less terrifying. Of course, those who have done this themselves and who can reassure and share knowledge are also particularly precious. And very much appreciated.

It’s important sometimes to be reminded that these people (‘my people’) are still here. I sometimes think the secret to life is to remember that friendships and support structures and community are not place-bound, at least not any more. These same people, and with whom it is precious to sit down and talk and share a good bottle of wine or a good coffee, are the same people who are just a phonecall or an email or an sms or an online chat away when I’m in another province or another country. That the same conversations and the same ordinary everyday things can still be shared no matter how many miles lie between us. Many people lament the loss of personal contact that they feel results from facebook and blogging and gchat, etc. I think they’re wrong. The joy of face-to-face, real contact is still there. But the reality – at least for my generation and at this time – is that we’re scattered over many continents, through many countries, so for us, the ability to carry on ordinary, everyday conversations, the ability to chat about the mundane and the ridiculous, as well as the existential and important, is crucial. Perhaps it is this ability to stay in contact – with no fuss and without the weighty importance of elegantly scribed letters – that makes the incredibly movement of a generation of people possible. Perhaps it is simply what makes it bearable.

New beginnings in new places with new people will always be a little terrifying for me. But the continuity, the ongoing ordinary conversations with friends and family, make them bearable. The secret for me, I suppose, is other people.

The tyranny of administrative bureaucracy

Admin, Travel

Admin terrifies me. Not that I’m disorganised. Actually, I can be very organised. And logical. I’m quite logical about organising things. Which may be the problem. I sometimes think that logic is an alien concept to administrative bureaucracy. At every step, they have another, different form that has to be filled in. Sometimes it is a form that asks for exactly the same information as the last form. Sometimes it is mostly identical information except for that one obscure question that you never thought anyone would ask and that you can see no reason for them to ask and that you never actually bothered to find out. And they can never tell you WHY they need the information. Or why the last form you filled out can’t suffice for this step, too.

And just when you think you have it all sorted out, they announce that they’ve changed some of the regulations and you have to go back to the beginning. Or some muppet forgot to tell you that you needed to have photos. Or to fill out the form in triplicate. Or to stand on your head and click you heels together three times while singing Sarie Marais and smiling at the imaginary baby.

The worst part, the most terrifying part of administrative bureaucracy is that they have complete power over you. They can do whatever they want. On a whim, because he/she woke up in a bad mood, it is fully within the power of an admin person to lose/reject/terminate a crucial application or piece of paper with absolutely no explanation. And there is nothing you can do. You will be sent right back to the beginning of the queue. Months of admin and waiting and fighting with various government departments will dissolve into nothing – like a disprin ad – and you will have no choice but to start all over again. It’s like bad teachers and lecturers who spend all their time bemoaning the performance of their classes when the actual problem is that they don’t bother to set clear question papers.

And it’s not as if you can phone them and yell at them. There would be nothing quite as satisfying as going up to or calling an admin person who is messing you around or delaying you and yelling at them. But that would be counterproductive. Because upsetting them will simply make things take longer or get lost altogether. Assuming you could even get them on the phone. Answering phones (at any time in any manner, never mind  promptly and professionally) seems to be a section that was skipped in most admin people’s training. Especially if they work for government.

My admin journey seems now to be safely out of the hands of the South African bureaucracy, which I fervently hope is a good thing. A few things I’ve learned in the 5-month long process of obtaining all the documents required to apply for a visa:

1. Don’t, whatever you do, live in a small town on the other side of the country from the departments you need to fight with

2. The post office is actually a lot more efficient and effective than you’ve been told. Couriers not so much. Postnet is amazing!

3. The DFA will send back your documents and do what you ask but are incapable of answering their phones or email, so you’ll get your docs, you just won’t be able to track their progress

4. Never, ever, ever try and get admin out of any South African department in the same month that there is at least one public holiday ever week (April) and a national election. Just don’t. It will make you sad.

This afternoon, I am sending off all of the paperwork to another country, hopeful that I’ve filled out all the forms correctly, that there is nothing missing, that they will be a little quicker than my own country’s bureaucrats and that no-one loses, refuses or rejects any of the crucial bits of paper it’s taken 5 months to collect.

Packing

Travel

Still weeks away from leaving and a bureaucracy-ridden distance from confirmation, and at the risk of tempting “the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing“, I’ve decided to be unusually optimistic and start the packing process. I almost had a magical packing moment this morning, when I thought I’d managed to fit all the things I’ve been considering taking into the suitcase at the first go. Until I realised I’d forgotten about shoes.

I am one of those odd creatures who enjoys buses, loves airports, doesn’t even mind delays and is willing to eat some airline food. Packing is probably my least favourite aspect of travelling. Not that I’m concerned about leaving something behind (mostly because I always overpack). Just because it’s tiresome. I’m not bad at packing, as such. I’ve reached the point, based on experience, where I can pack a suitcase for a business trip in Gauteng (ranging from 2 days to 2 weeks) in around 10 minutes. A trip overseas for a year is a little more complicated.

What I am discovering, however, is that there is a ceiling to how complicated packing can really be before it just becomes ridiculous. I have also been strangely affected by a brief trip to Moz earlier this year/late 2008. I’ve generally been a fairly economical packer – at least since travelling for work became a very regular part of my young life for a few insane years – but I’ve never been particularly good at that Zen-ish ‘travelling light’ and ‘relinquishing-obsessions-with-worldly-posessions’ approach.

Backpacking for a couple of weeks seems to have begun to change that. Which is not to suggest that I have suddenly become Zen – I’m far too OCD for that. But I am a lot less concerned about not having packed something I might need. I have a sense of what basics I will probably use and I’m taking just a very few other bits and pieces. I’ve even taken it further and thrown out years and years of accumulated junk so that most of my life will actually fit into one suitcase (except the 2 bookcases of books).

Ok, the real reason for this change (although facilitated by backpacking and one or two other experiences), is that I have to have space to take some of my precious books with me. And I may well arrive on the other side and wish I’d packed more stuff. But ass I pack and repack my bags, and toss out more and more, over the next couple of weeks, it’s a wonderfully superior feeling to pretend I really am Zen and am totally into ‘travelling light’.