Sometimes it’s only once you’ve gone away and come home again that a new place can begin to be home. It’s been a month now, or almost a month, since I landed in Joburg. The last week in KZN was stressful. Perhaps not as bad as it could have been. Work provided some routine and once I’d decided that what couldn’t go would just have to stay, it was easier.

The boxes went on the Thursday. The last of the packing. The last of the throwing away. The last of the leaving behind. It’s harder than it sounds.

The taxi arrives. Close the bags. Hand over the keys. That strange time between lives when you no longer possess house-keys. One last glance at the green, green valley where I’ve lived and worked these past two years and the valley of 1000 hills falls away behind me.

The flight Is uneventful. I recognize the cabin crew. I watch the colours change.

We come in through the clouds, from the deep, deep blue summer sky, sinking and gliding through the storm clouds and out over the suburbs. I look up and realize the plane is on it’s side as the pilot feathers the edge of a giant cloud – a beautiful piece of flying. To the left outside my window the Joburg skyline rises above the city. I’m excited and relieved and happy and, in a strange way, home.

I stop for a moment in the airport. Between the escalators. Between domestic and international arrivals. This is my airport. For years, this has been my transition between places; my in-between place. It has evolved and changed but it still has that same something I fell in love with all those years ago. In spite of the noise, now that they’ve introduced annoying airports radio, there is still a quiet and a space that I find freeing. The airport is a good thinking space.

That sense of being en route, in transit, is something I like in most situations. Being between homes, with all the pressure of a new job, boxes due to be delivered and a university admin to contend with at the same time, was less fun. The first week was tough. In fact, it’s been a high-pressure January. I realised when I got home from travelling last night that I really need the space to wake up in my own flat on a day that doesn’t seem overwhelming. I suppose it all seems overwhelming at first.

It’s nearly a month now. A month in a new old place. A month of finding my feet. I’m still finding my feet – and feeling like I’ll never quite get it.

But something is different here. There is a clarity, a purposiveness I didn’t have before. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I wrote this post. It wasn’t the (admittedly rather vague) plan. I begin to settle, to find my feet, to make a life. Perhaps a stop on the way? Perhaps the first part of a life less ordinary.