Monthly Archives: August 2010

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

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.