All posts by Claire

About Claire

Wandering (and wondering) development professional and aspiring aid worker. Contact me on anticipationofwonder[at]gmail[dot]com

Second Spring

South Africa

In Korea, I struggled, even more than the unfamiliar food and chilly (read: bloody freezing) weather, with the long, long winter. I have grown up with northern stories – fairytales from Germany, school stories set in Austria, UK children’s books – so I was aware of winters more extreme than my own. I never realised how long, cold and miserable they could be. I now understand the age-old fear that the sun might never return. There were moments where I found myself wondering if I would ever be warm again. One of the moments that sticks in my mind is the first time I felt sun on my skin in six months. It was Saturday afternoon in late April and I was at Duryu Park. After walking for a while I started to feel warm (it had warmed up to 12C), so I took off my jacket and finally felt in the sunshine on my arms. It sounds such a small thing but just thinking about it, I am filled again with that rush of relief and joy.

South Africa is different. When I arrived home, winter had just begun. Apart from a few miserable days and the occasional snow on high mountains, the cold has been limited to a chilly wind and some frosty nights. It’s as if winter here is weaker, less able to taunt and terrify, less powerful than the snowy, icy grip in the north. Seasons turn dramatically in Korea, when they finally arrive, and summer is sharp but short. Here winter is small and gently smiling spring has begun her slow comeback long before the last memory of summer’s sunburn fades.

The weather is changing. A new wind blows, sweeping away winter cobwebs. Some days are cold again, as winter tries to keep hold a little longer. Others are warm and sunny. In the Eastern Cape, the grass is still winter-bleached and the ground dry and sandy, but already new leaves are unfurling and blossoms shyly emerge. Spring jasmine scents warm afternoons and turns slanting sunlight to magic.

My second spring of the year will be less dramatic; with no cherry-blossom festivals and no prospect of everything flowering in one go. It will be longer and gentler and, at least to me, more beautiful. There will be time to enjoy each moment, to notice each flower, quietly to come to terms with the change and the return. This spring will not crown the year. She is the forerunner, the anticipation of the scorching African summer to come – the summer of warmth and home, air that holds and envelopes, taste metallic, like thunderstorms and blood, and the heady scent of dust as ancient as the world

The dreaded scale

bus, Travel

The bus left Somerset West at 8:10 on Friday evening. I settled into my window seat and disappeared into an mp3 playlist, dozing every now and then. All went well until, somewhere near Swellendam, sometime around midnight, the bus pulled off the road.

We had no idea what was going on. The lights were turned on, the bus stopped and we sat idling for ages. After about half an hour of waiting, the bus pulled back around and then returned to where it had originally stopped. Another delay, another trip around the circle. After a third trip around, the stewardess finally informed us that the bus was overweight. The reason for the going around and around was that they had been attempting to redistribute the luggage to balance things out – the weighbridge measures the weight on each axle – but to no avail. The only solution was for some passengers to get off the bus.

They weren’t, it turned out, planning to leave people there. Someone had called someone who knew someone who was organising a mini-bus taxi to take some people through to the next stop, where passengers would get off, so we would no longer be overloaded. ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan.

The stewardess found 13 volunteers who were loaded into the taxi when it arrived. The bus returned to the weighbridge. Still too heavy. Two more people moved to the taxi. The bus moved back to the scales. We got half way and it looked like we were going to run into problems. We couldn’t unload anyone else because the taxi could not legally carry more than 15 people. This is not normally a problem in taxis but this was at the actual traffic department stop with traffic cops running the place so they would have complained. That said, they didn’t seem to notice when the stewardess asked the passengers from the front to move to the middle and crouch down so that we could get through the weighing and get out of there.

It worked and the bus was on the road again, much to everyone’s relief. As we headed off into the night, it occurred to me that all of this had taken place in a country where most people strongly belief that traffic cops do nothing, in the middle of a Friday night and in the midst of a massive labour dispute between public service workers and government.

Dreams of kimchi-land

Daegu, travelling in Korea, ,

“We live, as we dream – alone…” Joseph Conrad

There is nothing quite like travelling alone to a foreign country to isolate one. This is not to say that I haven’t been loving every moment of seeing friends and family since returning. It’s amazing to see everyone but it also a reminder of how experiences isolate us. As a friend observed the other day, it’s the little things – the food, the household practices, cultural idiosyncrasies of a place far, far removed from anything those around me have ever known. A couple of months returned and I am particularly aware of those little things. I keep thinking of something or noticing things that remind me of Korea. It doesn’t seem rational. I am so very happy to be home and have no desire to go back. I guess when you live in a place for month upon month it gets under your skin and I always miss the places I’ve called home.

Some of the things I miss are obvious. I’m still subscribed to the ROKetship feed so I get each new cartoon and find myself laughing and thinking of the people who share that context. Some mornings I also wake up full of the urge to head to DongDaegu to take a train or a bus to Gyeongju or Busan or Seoul and go exploring. It’s a lot harder without that super-efficient public transport system. It’s also harder without a thousands-of-years-old Silla Capital and museums around every corner. Or an Opera House just across town. I miss living in a country that invests heavily in history, tourism and the arts.

I miss the little things too. Not even miss – I’m just aware of the difference and less comfortable in my own culture than I used to be. I feel just a little bit uneasy every time I suddenly register that I’m wearing shoes in the house. Anyone’s house. I miss having a ‘mart’ on every corner selling the basic essentials – like garlic and instant rice and plastic cheese slices and Spam. The shops are lovely and western and modern here – not to mention clean and pleasant – but they are so far away and wandering down aisle after aisle makes everywhere feel like Costco or HomePlus (which isn’t as good a thing as it seems like it should be). I find myself reverting to Korean – strangely most often when I’m trying to use a language other than English. Saying ‘Kam-sa-ham-nida’ to an Afrikaans-speaking bag-packer at the local PnP gets odd looks.

Other things are less expected. I miss eating with chopsticks. It’s not intellectual, either. I miss the feel of metal chopsticks in my hands. I feel the need to eat (ramen) noodles with chopsticks just to be eating with chopsticks. But really what I want is pajeon or galbi. Korean food. Proper Korean food, with all the side dishes – even the ones I don’t like. And, of course, kimchi. I miss kimchi. It is strange and odd and a little embarrassing, but I really do. I keep thinking about that Galbi place next to Festival downtown. Or the Hut. I miss the Hut. I miss the people and the place and the music and ‘Congratulations’. And dongdongju. Bizarrely, I miss Korean beer, but I think more for the sake of Somaek. Some days I want nothing more than to be able to head to the Hut after work at 9pm.

I miss that part of my life – far enough away now to be something that happened, another chapter. Missing places and people, like regret, is probably futile, except that it strengthens memories, histories. Things experienced alone only really exist in the mind of the experiencer. In remembering, we travel back to those places and those times and revisit, reinforce, sometimes recreate, what exists nowhere else. At least, that’s how I think of it – with a secret, private smile – when I suddenly feel that crazy urge to go to the hut or drink dongdongju or eat kimchi with metal chopsticks.