Category Archives: South Africa

Durban. September. Rain.

Adventures, Airports, South Africa

It’s raining in Durban. It’s September, of course it’s raining in Durban. This is my lasting memory of the town. Durban, which for everyone else is summer holidays and December sunshine, is September rain to me. Not that I mind. September rain in Durban is inextricably tangled in my mind with the reason for all of those visits – huge, unwieldy, intense events.

We fly into King Shaka International Airport. This is the new airport. What it lacks in convenient proximity (it’s about 40 minutes from town), it makes up for in atmosphere and practical design. It feels a lot like OR Tambo, but set in beautiful, rolling hills of sugar cane. We travel into town and check into the hotel. It occurs to me that it’s an awfully long time since I spent time in a South African hotel. Once upon a time, hotel rooms were as familiar to me as my own bedroom. Somehow I have travelled back to a point where hotels are a novel experience.

I won’t see much of the inside of the hotel this time around. Not unlike the last time around. Then, as now, I was here for an event. I have such clear memories from that time. I think the memories from those few weeks are clearer than any others from that phase of my life. It is amazing what the intensity of an event can do to my sense of time and space. I learnt so much. The learning curve was steep and I spent a lot of time feeling terrified and insecure. I think the confidence and strength I learnt during that event carried me through the next few years. So reassuring to be back in that eventing space, in Durban in September in the rain, all these years later.

We visit the same places: Suncoast for dinner, Wilson’s Wharf for drinks. Travelling back to the airport on the last day, past silver-sun-washed sea and the new Durban stadium, I am struck by the strange synchronicity of it all. After all these years and all I have seen, it is still Durban in September in the rain that reminds me what I’m capable of and pushes me to think seriously about the next step, the next option and all I’ve learnt from the amazing people I’ve worked with in this town.

The bittersweetness of boxes

Daegu, South Africa,

On a warm Wednesday morning in May, I sent two medium-sized boxes on their way, hoping against hope that between the Korean Post Office, the South African Post Office and two customs departments they’d arrive in one piece. The first one arrived today.

I set off with ID and R25 customs duty, alerted by a parcel slip in the mail. The Post Office teller looked utterly bewildered, which did not bode well. Luckily, she had a friend and between them it took a mere 15 minutes to locate my 1 box. Another 10 minutes and I was walked out. It was an easy late-winter day – sun, blue-sky, jasmine – very similar, now that I think about it, to the day I posted the boxes. I found myself feeling strangely prickly and protective. I wanted to get to where I could be alone with my box. This box, with its twin still to come, was the last part of me to come home, my last link to another world so very far away.

Back home, I opened it. Three months (almost to the day) since I packed, I had no idea what to expect. Inside was a smaller box stuck closed with sticky-tape. It began to come back to me. I remembered the frantic packing and the long walk to the Post Office. Somewhere in here was a mug I got at the Opera. I wondered if it was still intact. The small box contained little mementos – one or two things from my Korean Christmas, the miniature windsock from when we went paragliding, a bracelet I bought at that temple we went to on that Daegu City Bus Tour.

Underneath was the backpack I bought at that little shop in Suncheon, that last epic weekend when I went to see the Islands. I’d packed it full of clothes – clothes I’d almost forgotten existed. Summer clothes I’ll be glad of soon. Depth-of-winter clothes I may never use again: long underwear, heavy denim jeans, my coat, so crumpled I’m going to have to get it dry-cleaned.

I sat on the floor with that coat in my hands and the memories flooding back. I remember the day I bought it. A random day on my way to school. I stopped at Fashion Exchange opposite the bus stop. They had racks of coats outside. What did I know about buying coats? The only coats I’d owned had been second-hand imports I’d never worn more than once or twice in a winter. But here I was going to need a coat so I took the one that fitted. It was the first winter thing I bought and my comfort against the cold for all those months. It felt so strange to have it here, now, back in my real world. All these things. As if the memory of another lifetime had somehow arrived in the post.

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