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.