The warrior’s now a worker and his war is underground
With cordite in the darkness he milks the bleeding veins of gold
When the smoking rock-face murmurs, he always thinks of you
African sky blue
Johnny Clegg and Savuka, African Sky Blue

Daegu is a city of sky-scrapers. Sometimes when I’m moving around in buses and on foot, I can forget this and feel almost as if it is normal for buildings to tower over roads and buildings, but it’s always there at the back of my mind. I find all cities a little claustrophobic. I once spent a day in New York and my lasting impression of it is that there are too many buildings and not enough open spaces. And I don’t mean little parks in between the buildings. I know that lots of cities have created parks and planted trees and done everything they can to ‘green’ their cities. But a little bit of green is not the same as open spaces. This city is surrounded by tree-covered hills (literally surrounded – it feels like there are dozens of them). It’s hard to explain to someone from a completely different world that the green is sometimes as claustrophobic as the huge buildings.

Ultimately, I suppose it comes down to what you’re used to. The area where I’ve been living in South Africa is a forestry area, with miles of green forested hills and some natural forests of the Tsitsikamma variety. But these exist in between the wind-swept grassland mountain slopes and open hills dotted with acacias and the occasional aloe. And all the places I have travelled to in South Africa, as well as the several other places I have lived, have been surrounded by open space. Farmlands and game parks and open veld stretching to the horizon, or the immenseness of the open sea.

One of the other reasons that all South African spaces seem more open is probably because our cities tend to meander off into the distance instead of being compact (modern?) cities. We seem to build out instead of up. I suppose because a shortage of space is not generally a constraint. Plus, of course, ground that is not hugely stable in places like Joburg make building up a little risky. Here they build up. In order to house the apartments and offices of the millions who live in the small-ish city where I am, massive apartment blocks grow towards the heavens. When I first landed in Daegu, I was struck by the fact that, from the air, the sky scrapers looked like clusters of some semi-wild thing growing straight upwards from the ground. From the ground, from the streets and the little parks, they seem like monstrous hunks of concrete towering precariously above you (though the precariousness is probably just a matter of perspective). In a city surrounded by mountains, the sight of a green hill is actually fairly rare; a sweet surprise when you round a bend or find yourself high enough up to see them, but generally hidden by yet another neon-lit sky-scraper. Even from my fifth-floor classroom window, most of the hills are obscured by much taller buildings.

And then there is the rain. A lot of South Africa is way closer to desert than lush green paradise. I love the summer thunderstorms of the Highveld but they don’t deliver all that much rain. Even Cape Town, except when it’s flooding, only gets a moderate amount of rain compared to a lot of other places in the world. I got quite used to regular rain in Cape Town Winters. It didn’t thrill me then, either. This is a lot like that – except that it’s always hot. And there seems to be even more of it. I don’t think there has been a dry day since I arrived. I now don’t ever leave the house without an umbrella and most days I wake up to and/or go to sleep to the sound of rain. Today I was glad that the rain woke me because I had forgotten to set my alarm. But at some point enough feels like enough. You start to wonder how there can possibly be so much water in the sky (yes, I know scientifically that is a silly statement, but that’s how it feels). Particularly in the mornings when I’m walking to the bus stop  in the rain (almost without fail). And everything is always a tiny bit damp. Sometimes, when the rain is light, it doesn’t even seem worth the effort of opening an umbrella – and you know that it’s hot enough that the few drops of rain will dry off quickly. Even if I do get odd looks. But often it pours for hours at a time. This also means that there are always clouds. This isn’t the kind of rain that builds, then pours, then clears. Even on the rare occasions when I catch a glimpse of the sky (behind the dark green mountains and the dark grey sky-scrapers), it is grey and full of clouds and rain.

A friend has posted some stunning pics of a trip he took to Lesotho, complete with wonderful wide open sky. Looking at them this afternoon, I was filled with the first surges of homesickness – a deep longing for wide open spaces and endless blue skies. There is something amazing about the emptiness of the African sky – resting a million miles above an African Winter landscape, pale and dry and stretching forever to the horizon. Dana Synman writes in his book, On the Back Roads, “…Maybe it’s because today most of us are confined to life in the cooped-up spaces of the cities. It’s great to know there’s open space out there where you can just drive, and drive, and drive. Open spaces allow you to dream dreams of freedom.” A colleague and I were talking today about how the Koreans seem to live very ordered, confined lives. It’s an almost perfect foil to the freedom of open spaces. The symbol of that freedom for me will always be the sky – those wide open skies that go on forever and forever, with a depth and an intensity that seems to last until the end of time. It makes me think of the Voortrekkers, taking off across the mountains, into the distance – heading out to forever and a future that was uncertain but free. I wonder if they sensed the amazing weight of that empty sky.

Before this bout of longing for African skies, I had lunch today (with same colleague) at a place called Outback. Apparently there is some sense of the value of wide open spaces here, too, even if the name is (as I imagine it is) intended to appeal mostly to the minds (and wallets) of foreigners. Whatever their gimmick, I was not going to complain about being in a restaurant where I could order a steak – a good, solid, rich, medium-rare steak. Meat makes me happy, so it’s good to know that there are places to get a good steak in town. It may not happen often, but it’s good to know there is the option.

We also drove past a group of about 20 people sitting on the pavement outside a building, each on a square of plastic with some kind of plastic topped thing that looked a little like a plastic fan. I was a little confused. Then we saw them all start tapping their plastic things on the ground in unison and chanting. Apparently they were having some kind of protest. I always have a sense of something wrong when I see people from other countries protesting. I had the same feeling watching protests in the UK on TV earlier this year. I feel like they’re not doing it right. I tried to explain it to my colleague, how I feel that they’re not taking it seriously – they’re just not doing it right. In South Africa, a protest involves people who feel very strongly about their issue and will make that very clear with loud, un-ignorable singing and dancing. My colleague pointed out that if he was in charge he probably wouldn’t take it too seriously if people were singing and dancing in protest. Perhaps I didn’t explain it right. I remember watching a BBC report on protests somewhere (Indonesia?) earlier this year and thinking that the reporter was missing the point when he said that all seemed calm because people were singing and dancing. Perhaps it is because I know only too well (based on my country’s history) that a singing, dancing crowd is fully capable of turning to violence if their voices are not heard, but watching a crowd toyi-toyi, it feels like they’re taking it seriously. Or maybe it is the unique strangeness of South Africa (Southern Africa?) that singing and dancing are not just frivolous recreational pastimes, they’re part of everything – a serious, meaningful part of every serious, meaningful thing.

A serious part of every aspect of my life, too, no matter how far away I am. Like the African performances at the Mandela Day concert in New York, which I loved. Particularly Chris Chameleon and Baaba Maal. And watching Jesse Clegg and Freshly Ground perform Asimbonanga, which felt a little bit (at least from my slightly nostalgic perspective) like a new generation of South African musicians taking the torch. The music I can take with me – even if most people here will never quite understand it. Some days I wish I could do the same with the African sky.