Life in The South

I still promise to sometime post the remaining writings from Africa someday. Now I have to find them. So, in the meantime, we have settled into life here in Blacksburg, Virginia. As with anyplace, the world is full of beauty if you take the time to notice it, but still, I think that this is one of the more beautiful places in this world.

We live in town, a quick bike ride to work, stores, the awesome Farmer's Market, and yet on two sides of our house, our neighbors are a big open field. The comforts of town, without town. We watch the haybaling when it happens and observe... There is a horse farm just down the road that we like to walk to. The walk reminds me of my youth - early mornings smelling of honeysuckle, a feeling of freedom, and watching horses - exactly a favorite pasttime of my high school years. There are cherry trees, pear trees, and all kinds of special finds in nature. There are lighning bugs that light the fields and make you feel and believe in magic. There are big old trees with branches grown to be climbed. And we do. There is a grape arbor and the excitement of waiting for something that will be turned to jellies and wine. And it is something to hide under - like a secret fort for kids. It is a return to childhood. And I love it.

However, as much as I love it, and as much as I love my job and the people I work around, I am already antsy and looking forward to something new. I don't know what will be next, but I have all the faith in the world that it will be good.

My little sister and my new brother in law are coming from DC to visit this weekend. I am so excited. Of course, they are family...and I adore them and believe that my time with them is absolutely precious. Funny though, as I was thinking about my feelings of restlessness, I was remembering our older sister, Lori's, toast at their wedding this June. She talked about Alyssa and how, in our family, what she was known for was her resistence to change. And that holding on quality of Alyssa is what has given her a happy, wonderful relationship with Paul and a successful career doing what she loves. She is a gem, and there are so many ways that she and I are similar - but this, is not one of them. Funny how different we are in that...I had just been noticing that my life had begun to fall into a routine. For me, routine is bad. It works for a while, but I get bored with it, no matter how good it is, and end up feeling like I'd rather scratch my eyes out with a ball point pen than to have one more single day that is just like the day before. Which probably explains why I am not married (in principle at least) and have only a quasi-serious commitment to my career, which I love right now, but I know me, it will change again someday. So there it is...irony, huh? I have no idea why I am hardwired to feel that way...

I am not lost in Africa...

After moving from Alaska and traveling to South Africa, as well as some massive car repair bills, I am fairly completely in debt. As such, to save money, I do not have internet, phone, cable (whatever, I don't like tv enough to pay for that even if I have money, but I'm making a point, so no quibbling over it! My points don't have to make sense. They are mine.), etc. So, my current home internet connection is patchy and solely present at all due to the kindness of an unknown neighbor who has an unsecured wireless account. That said, I keep trying to post the rest of what I did write about our travels in Africa, and before it can go up, the internet connection disappears. So, to answer the recent inquiries regarding my whereabouts, no, I am not still wandering in Africa. I am as settled down in our new home in Blacksburg, Virginia as an unsettled girl can get, enjoying spring and an exciting new job. But the remainder of Africa babble and the wanderings after that will indeed get posted...some day...I'm not committing to when though.

Kruger National Park

Kruger National Park, to me, seems like a kind of a do-it-yourself safari. I think of it as the Denali of South Africa. It is utterly teeming with wildlife and gorgeous scenery and vast open lands around the roads. You can drive your personal vehicle through the park, but the big rule there is that you are not allowed to get out of the car once on the road for your protection from the dangerous animals: lions, hippos, crocodiles, etc. I have to mention, that while I love Denali National Park, and would be happy to go back there to visit anytime, in terms of the variety of wildlife, it actually pales in comparison to Kruger.

We spent two days driving through the park. And during those days we saw: lions, zebra, countless impala (which I learned are refered to by South Africans as “alweerbok,” which means “not again buck.” It became almost tiring to see them… “oh, look, more impala…”), giraffes, warthogs, bushbuck, duiker, hippopotamus, white rhinocerus, elephants, buffalo, baboons, blue wildebeest, ostriches, crocodiles, a monitor lizard, African fish eagle, saddlebilled storks, an unidentified snake or two, hornbills, rollers, and a huge list of other birds. Unfortunately, no kudu, cheetah, or leopards were on our list. However, the list is undoubtably impressive and the experience unforgettable. And either the lions, the rotting giraffe carcas that they had been feeding on, or both really stunk.

On the first day driving in Kruger, Walter stopped the car so we could watch a dung beetle rolling his dung ball across the road in front of us. However, just as he was passing our car and into the next lane, we saw another vehicle approaching and worried that our little friend was going to be mushed. So, we sat, nervously watching, and cheering the little dung beetle along, “Go, dung beetle!!! Go! Go Go!!!!” He made it, and we all cheered.

I should mention that I am trying to improve my Afrikaans vocabulary. It also now includes the names of several animals, butcher shop, good night, and a few other random words. Though, this surprisingly did not help me much when Owen and I walked to the local butcher shop to look for ostrich steaks. I had no idea what much of anything in the store was because I can’t read the labels, so I had to just resort to asking for help. We did get the ostrich steaks, which were delicious. And my limited vocabulary was also not of much use when we went to see a concert by Nataniël, a South African performer, who apparently beyond being a talented singer, is also just hilarious. But, I enjoyed the performance anyway, despite not being able to understand much of it. I think he made some joke between his songs that refered to an ostrich. Oh, and chickens. I know that word too.

Zebras

There are moments in life that are timeless. When put to words, they sound trivial, insignificant. But remembrance is alive with all the senses and the senses are not dulled with time. It is this that makes those moments powerful beyond words. They burn themselves onto the soul and forever leave their mark. Instantaneously, there is the feeling of knowing; like knowing that a dream is more than a dream, the way a vision comes. For me, these moments are always associated with solitude in nature. They are moments during which thoughts disappear into the wonder of the world around me; like reaching a higher spiritual plane through medidation, without the medidation (what a gift for someone as undedicated as me to experience those moments without the dedication!). I believe that the universe sends us those moments of clarity for reasons that will remain a secret for now; but, as such, they are rare. Perhaps the rarity is what allows them to remain so vivid in the mind through time, because they are not overly clouded by trying to retain far too many of them.

I have a handful of those experiences in my life. Two of them are associated with two of my favorite places in this world and part of the reasons that they are my favorite places: Alaska and southwest Virginia. And now, life has seen fit to send me one to associate with South Africa. On a hot afternoon during our weekend “in the bush” with Walter’s parents, I took a walk so I could look around one last time before hitting the road. Owen was happily playing in a sprinkler, so I left him in the care of Walter, An, and Okie, and went out. During the walk, I saw several zebra standing in the road ahead of me. While walking in to get a better look, the rest of the herd ran in and I stood in the midst of them. And at the same time, a family of warthogs jumped up from their afternoon nap and ran into the middle of the scene. That is one of those moments, and as I said, it sounds trivial when put to words, but there it is, and it is one of them. Zebra are truly beautiful animals and warthogs, well, they are just adorable.

Speaking Akrikaans

Apparently, I learn slowly and my pronunciation is abhorrent. Or I am just enjoying my lazy vacation-mode, sipping coffee all morning and alcohol in the afternoons through evenings. Owen's pronunciation, in contrast to mine, is perfect and he seems to remember new words in volumes as compared to me. I wish we retained the sponge capacity of our brains as we aged.

After about 5 days in South Africa, I added three words to my Afrikaans vocabulary: bug, liquor store, and butterfly. Useful, huh (well, the liquor store term really is undeniably important)? I feel more than slightly pathetic.

After about one and a half weeks, I have added several animal names, a few odd other words, butcher shop, and goodnight to my vocabulary. So has Owen.

Owen's favorite Afrikaans word seems to be volstruis, or ostrich. We stopped at a butcher shop one afternoon to buy some lamb (Walter makes fabulous lamb steaks on the grill and Owen absolutely loves eating it) and I pointed out that there was ostrich meat for sale. Since that moment, Owen has been telling me over and over, "Mommy, I really want to eat volstruis. I've never tried volstruis yet." He's an adventurous boy, with an adventurous appetite. I'm proud of that.

On Being Ill-Prepared

It completely goes against the nature of my upbringing with my being the product of excessively prepared parents, but I flew halfway around the world with Owen, with not the slightest idea of what we were going to do once we got here. And not only did I have absolutely nothing planned, but I hadn't taken the time to learn anything about the history and/or culture of the country I was going to stay in, learned no more than 3 words of the language, and hadn't even remembered to write down Walter's phone number to put in my bag in case of something unexpected happened. The weeks before the road trip had been just beyond hectic, and there were a lot of things that suffered. Planning for the international vacation was one of these things.

On our first day here, Walter went off to work, and Owen and I slept in and basically just bummed around, spending most of the day sitting on the deck and enjoying the sun. We load up on sunscreen everyday (I at least prepared for that one), and Owen has taken to telling people that he meets that "Our Alaskan skin isn't used to the sun, so we wear lots of sunscreen." At least he hasn't yet forgotten where he's from.

At some point during the day, we decide to walk outside of the "compound" (Walter lives in a high security community, enclosed with electric fencing and complete with security personnel who patrol the community, day and night) to the nearest convenience store to buy Owen some juice. I brought my camera to take pictures of flowers and Owen and anything else interesting that we came across. One of the community guards actually stopped me during the walk, pointed to my camera, and informed me that I am not allowed to take pictures of the houses. I smiled, told him that I was only taking pictures of flowers and the kid, and we walked on. Still, it was a curious encounter to me.

At this point and during the course of this walk, I became aware of how ill-prepared I was several times. First off, people are very friendly here and everyone smiles, waves, and often stop to chat. They generally seem to start the conversation in Afrikaans too. I was wishing that I had at least learned simple friendly greetings and responses. One man laughed and told me, "I just asked you how you are doing." I really should have learned something other than the Afrikaans words for: chicken, thank you, and hangover (hoender, dankie, and babelas). So much for my communications. Luckily though, everyone generally speaks English here as well.

The other thing that I had no clue about was the currency here. I had at least picked up somewhere on the term "rand," but I had not bothered to look up the exchange rate and had no idea what a rand was worth. So the 5.80 juice that I bought for Owen seemed outrageous, but later Walter told me that it was equivalent to 58 cents. I am seriously amused at myself over this.

I should mention that the highlight of the walk home was that as we walked past the golf course, there were some golfers sitting at a table next to coolers of beer and sodas. They stopped me and asked if we'd like drinks, so Owen got to try his first soda ever (an orange soda) and I got a Castle beer. Castle beer is The National Beer of South Africa, as it says on the label. I'm hooked. So, we finished our walks with soda and beer in hand and sat on the deck at home and consumed our treats. I like this place.

Getting to Nelspruit

Our African Adventure story begins, of course, with the first flight, which took us directly from Dulles, DC to Johannesburg, South Africa. Obviously this is an excessively long flight. But, to kill the pain, the booze is free. I tapped into this method of pain relief. Owen handled the flight very well, drawing and coloring, watching movies, and eating. As usual on our travels, I was told by several people that I am very lucky for having such a well behaved and quiet boy. I do appreciate this fact very much, though usually there is a spell of roughly a half hour every time where I am not convinced of this fact. But, realistically, this is a really small percentage of a 17-plus hour trip, given that Owen is only 4 years old, and has just dealt with an excessively long road trip, so I should really just quit my inappropriate whining. Things could always be worse (and as I frequently say, this is the greatest form of beauty in the world: the fact that things could always be worse).

I realized during the course of this flight, the potential dangers of traveling internationally as a single parent with a young child. At some point during the flight, I had some sort of an attack that included dizziness, nausea, heart palpatations, sweating, and the general feeling like I was near passing out. Owen was asleep at this point, but as I tried to focus on breathing as settling my racing heart, all I could think about, other than trying to control my heart, was that I had no idea what would happen to Owen if something happened to me. That is a very scary thought. At least on this trip, we have "family" where we were headed, but it is something that I will be very mindful of in the future. I did manage to sleep through the attack and it went away, so I think in some way, it was just a message from the gods to remind me to be very careful.

When we got to Johannesburg, I also realized, for the first of many times to come, how completely ill-prepared I was for this trip. I had no idea what I had to do when I got there and different airline employees kept giving me different information. Plus, the flight was late and the connection to Nelspruit was tight anyway, so what this meant was that I had roughly 30 minutes to get my luggage, go through customs, go through security, and find the flight gate. And the Johannesburg airport is huge and confusing, and I had to navigate all of this while dragging a sleepy 4-year old around. We managed all this, just barely, thanks in no small part to South Africa's excessively lax customs and security. And as I proudly ran up to the gate, just barely on-time, and showed our boarding passes, we were then informed that the flight was late and would board in 20 minutes. Oh irony, you appear in my life yet again. But, this gave us time to change out of our winter clothes into more summer appropriate clothing. So, thanks South African Airways for your late departure, but it would have been nicer if I hadn't managed to work up such a sweat in getting to that point.

Arriving in Nelspruit, was, of course, wonderful, mainly because Walter was there waiting for us. And he, of course, had plenty of alcohol waiting at his home. It is so good to see him again!