Category Archives: Why

Waiting for Rain

Why

Until January, I lived in a place where water fell from the sky and floated in the air. A lot. All the time, it seemed, particularly in summer. Rain and mist. This time of year the mists began to come down, thick and soup-like. Sometimes there would be no sun for days. I hated it. The claustrophobic closeness, the perpetual damp, the smell of never-quite-dry clothes, always missing the sun.

It’s overcast today. There is a hint of cold rain in the air. I am not unhappy. For the first time in years, the prospect of rain doesn’t make me miserable. I’ve tried to explain to people how I feel about the rain – that all rain, all the time truly makes me very miserable. The experience of living through constant rain is oppressive. It feels like living, each day, with a deep, unresolvable longing weighing on your soul.

But I don’t hate rain. I am an African and I grew up in Africa – proper, dry, wide-open-space, grassland Africa. I cherish the touch and the taste and the release of eventually rain. The rain after the dryness. The sweet, wet rain on cracked winter skin and earth. The rain you have waited for. The rain that brings relief.

It’s overcast today and I am not unhappy. Today, I am waiting for the rain.

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drc, Ideas, Why

“Old friends, old friends, sat on the park bench like bookends… time it was, and what a time it was, it was a time of innocence, of confidences…” Simon and Garfunkel, Old Friends/Bookends

Sitting at dinner at a nice restaurant in Rosebank, Johannesburg, chatting about life and choices and freedom. It’s been so long. So much has gone. There is something about long friendships that provides a breathing space. I suppose it’s the length of time you’ve known a person that makes the current crisis seem fleeting now.

I have found myself thinking about the DRC a lot recently. I find myself – a smell, a melody, a taste – remembering/reliving walking down a dusty street in Bunia towards the place with the delicious whole fish and chips (was it the same place with the nutella?) and the cafe with the coffee and omelettes with cheese. There was a post office along the road. A once-functional post office. What an odd thing to remember, now? Memories of compounds and an abandoned house and sewing machines and a UN convoy. And a post office. I read an article today about MONUSCO in Bunia.

My world fell apart again last week. So much like before. Before when I was supposed to go to Russia. So much like the time they postponed my Korea trip on a whim. So much like all the other disappointments. I had a conversation with a friend the other day. She’s been going through a rough time and I assumed that she would get it. She listened and cared and tried to figure out where my disappointment fell on her ladder of what-we’re-supposed-to-care-about. On her scale of things, this disappointment didn’t really register. It was something I might be sad about but nothing of particular concern. In her ordinary world, I’m supposed to be okay.

So much has happened since that DRC trip. So many places, so many people. One of the people I walked the dusty streets of Bunia with is getting involved in a media enterprise that might, for the better, change the way we understand reporting. Two others are working on amazing areas of study. I know I contribute, I know I’m not doing nothing, particularly in the past six months, but I find myself longing, hoping, wishing, a-prey to disappointment and anger and a deep sense of urgency that says this is not enough.

I live in a world, now, far more populated by the characters of these kinds of emergencies. And I love every minute of it. But sometimes, when things go wrong, when life gets complicated, I’m reminded of that little inner voice that longs for that. Do you know what I remember? One of the things I wrote about, in the journals I learnt to keep because I had a friend who taught me the value of recording every day, was the moment I first walked into a compound. There is something mythical and mystical about an NGO compound for someone in my field. It represents, I suppose, the life we’re all hoping one day to lead. This one, when we accidentally found it (we were looking for something else entirely) was a place where someone was growing basil. I remember the couches on the porch and the small prefab rooms and the telecoms equipment and the fact that someone was growing basil.

When I came back from the DRC, I talked about the emptiness. In a situation of crisis, in a situation of disappointment, that emptiness returns. I remember the day we got back to Uganda from the DRC – back to civilization. I remember taking a hot shower and sitting down with a beer and not being able to articulate what I was feeling right then. It felt like coming back from the brink.

Places Remembered/Places Revisited

Adventures, Ideas, South Africa, Why

Rosebank is quiet in the mornings. The sun sparkles off the little fountains and waiters stand ready outside the coffee shop across the way. I sip my coffee. It is restful.

When I first left university, many years ago, I moved to Johannesburg. At the time, I lived in a place called Emerentia but I worked, that first year, in Rosebank. I loved Rosebank. Stepping off the bus and popping into the bakery for a to-die-for pastry or picking up a sandwich on the way to the office, on the way through through the shopping centre.

I remember loving the idea of being able to stop for coffee at a coffee shop on the way to work. I had come from a small town and lived for four years in another small town while studying. There was something sophisticated and “big city” about the idea of stopping on the way to work,to have a quick coffee and read the paper. Not that it happened much – that year was so busy that Rosebank, for the most part, passed me by.

Something stuck though. Rosebank stayed one of my favourite places in Joburg. Through the years and the occasional visits – made livable by amazing friends –  and long after the people I knew and the organisation I had worked for had moved on, it stayed a favourite place. Perhaps it was the buzz, the constant energy of people. Perhaps it was the many restaurants and coffee shops. Perhaps it was the tree-lined streets and the carpet of jacaranda flowers in the summer.

A few weeks ago, I moved back to Joburg. Despite the visits in the interim, this is the first time I’m really back. I could have lived anywhere, and in the chaos of the move (made more chaotic by moving when all the estate agents were closed for the summer), I seemed destined to find a far-away place. But I was fairly determined. Not that that would have been a terribly hardship, but I’d seen a glimpse of a different life, a life of restaurants and movies and meeting people outside of work and, if at all possible, I was set on it.

So much of my life will, if I get my way, be hard. Team houses in far away places, tough assignments that include mandatory counselling, huge risks with little tangible reward. This seems, in some ways, a pre-emptive respite. So I feel that I need to enjoy it as that. This is my counter-point to a future Somaliland or South Sudan or DRC.

I guess that was my justification – that and the sense that I need this after my long years in the middle of nowhere – for pushing the estate agent to get what I wanted. I succeeded, as it happens. In just over a week after arriving in Joburg, I moved into a flat in Rosebank. Not just in Rosebank but within easy (even at night) walking distance of the Mall. Suddenly going out for my favourite pizza or a movie or seeing friends is within easy reach.

Perhaps it is the newness of it all but it feels like such a luxury. I feel like I have somehow arrived. To step out of my building on a beautiful summer’s morning, and walk the few steps to the mall, on the way to the train (in other countries it would be an underground), makes me feel so happy. It makes me happy. I love the ease of it all. I love being able to trust the public transport system. I love the train system. I love the sunlight on the inner-city buildings in the mornings.

Most of all, I love being able to stop for a really good coffee, and sit, watching the people and the morning and the way the sun glitters off the fountains, on my way to work.  There is something peaceful about this life. I’m glad I’ve finally found the time, and the place, to make it happen. I wonder if, the last time around, I ever saw this future. I wonder because I have the time and the happy, safe space to wonder. And I wonder, from my safe space, over a morning coffee, what adventure will come after.