We took our kids to South Africa
I wasn’t sure what it would be like going back home after 12 years. Last time, I was a decade younger, with two small girls and far less London in my bones. Now, I’ve got more kids, more wrinkles and I may have forgotten what the sun looks like.
The sandy track meanders into a distance unknown. Unseen. On my left, Acacia after Acacia. On my right, a wire fence – keeping this portion of the snaking Crocodile River safe within the bounds of the world-famous Kruger National Park. A vivacious sun burns overhead. With each step, my feet kick up dust particles, releasing them into the atmosphere where they float freely before slowly settling in space and time.
The cry of a Ha de Dah forces my gaze upwards – as the emphatic bird flies overhead, I wonder about the many who have walked under this same sky. Eons of people. Some with no guide – no fence to lead them. I have a strong inclination to jump it – it wouldn’t be hard to just climb over, or scramble under (I’ve seen a buck do it). Deviate from the path. I’m daydreaming of course – I wouldn’t actually sneak into Kruger. There are lions in there. One could pop out of a shady spot at pretty much any time. Wait: imagination check. Lions don’t really “pop” out of anywhere – maybe lackadaisically saunter from the sporadic cover of an oversized Fever Tree. Either way, I don’t want to be in Simba’s way. Also, if a buck can get in and out, what’s stopping a lion?
My steps remain steady and my eyes are peeled (so far back they risk popping out, like I’m in a Looney Tunes cartoon). Simba could be anywhere. Was that a hyena? Its yip is unmistakable. It sounds far away. Breathe. Hippos grunt happily in the distance. I pause to inspect what look like snake tracks – surely not? A bug on urgent business scuttles past me. But it’s the incessant cooing of a Turtle Dove that diverts me from lions and fences…
…I’m lazing on a grassy bank next to the uMzimkulu river in the Drakensberg. The sun beats down on my back, as it does right now. I turn to my best friend, who has got her head buried in a Sweet Valley High book, a liquorice rope dangling from her lips, and give her a friendly nudge with my foot. We grab our black tubes and dash for the cool river.
“Mom! Mom! A buck!”
Pulled out of time, I tell my small daughter to walk slowly towards me. It’s a Kudu. Female. I drop down and look Delilah in the eye. “Shall we take a picture?”
We take thousands (literally) of pictures over the month we are in South Africa.
I wasn’t sure what it would be like going back home after 12 years. Last time, I was a decade younger, with two small girls and far less London in my bones. Now, I’ve got more kids, more wrinkles and I may have forgotten what the sun looks like. I imagined my arrival in many different ways but my favourite iteration is where I’m like Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves –returning to England after years fighting in the crusades. Dusty mine dumps replace the white cliffs; I’m in a plane rather than a boat and Dover Beach becomes be the tarmac of Oliver Thambo International Airport. Desperate to touch land, I bullfight my way down the aisle of Egypt Air – hand luggage flying, people falling, stewardesses panicking – and just as Robin Hood rubs his face in the sand, I too rub my face… on the tarmac in Joburg?
Much is lost in translation, including the skin on my face, but you get the idea. The pull of home is something visceral.
All it took was one breath and the sun on my skin.
Johannesburg.
Alien pylons punctuate the landscape, spawning kilometres of cascading wire that slices through bluer than blue sky. Colossal cumulonimbus clouds arouse imagination – a curly poodle turns into a tortoise, which morphs into either the eye of Sauron or a rugby ball (the car is split). As we drive toward the start of our grand adventure, I point out informal settlements enroute to Mpumalanga and refrain from the ‘you should see life in Africa’ lecture that I use to curb entitlement in our cushy North London suburb because, now they can see. Somehow, we avoid the seven roadblocks that are waylaying irate commuters and make our way to the bush without even a single pothole (don’t worry, they make a drastic appearance later on). We stop at Spur and my onion rings swim in pink sauce (oh happy day!) – I encourage my children to do the same but they are deeply suspicious. I manage to convert one out of five to the cult of thousand island (and five out of five by the time we leave). The lime/bubble-gum milkshake options are an easy win though.
With Spur in our veins and giraffe in our view, we are transfixed by the parched, post-winter landscape that unfolds into the distance. There’s something about the dirt. It gets into your lungs, and no amount of exhaling purges its grip upon your soul.
My soul.
Our soul.
Seeing home through the eyes of our kids – there aren’t really words to explain. I’ll try though. When you love something so much and it’s knitted into your DNA, and you get to share that with the people you love most in the world… the alchemy divulges a joy that takes root, permeating mind, heart and body. An elixir. The fun, laughter and even terror are exponential when untainted – when bushbuck are as exciting as lions and hailstones are the size of marbles; when sleeping car guards are not only endured by rewarded handsomely and Christmas Beetles may as well be a plague of apocalyptic flesh-eating locusts (woe to any child of mine who stumbles across a Park Town Prawn in future travels); when chicken feet at the deli counter are worth at least sixteen photos and Simba chips are manna from heaven.
From north, we head south, through Joburg – stopping at Granny’s fortress (barbed wire fencing and panic buttons) – and on to the mountains. The sparse winter landscape gives way to the lush green of KwaZulu Natal. Stopping at Harrismith, we find the Holy Grail – Siya Kolisi on a Coke can, and with Siya must come Eben. It’s 1995 all over again. We buy more than one to take back to London for our friends, not worrying about how we shall transport a now growing collection of tin cans. Wimpy (more lime and bubble-gum) then back in the car until finally the great dragon’s back emerges – purple and knobbly, tumbling across the horizon.
It rains in the berg. Thunder and lightning. The misty mountain prevails for a couple of days, keeping us tucked under blankets with books and Peppermint Crisps. When the sun emerges, we make tracks into the hills, which absorb us into their creases and folds. A grass green water snake slithers along the bank as ice cold river water washes over our skin and into our pores, making its way into the fabric of our composition. Forever changed.
And then around Lesotho and into the Karoo.
The searing orange sun burns Africa onto our retinas.
Kilometres and kilometres of nothing – flat, scrubby land with rising mounds and red rock. We learn that the best way to dodge potholes is to dodge the actual road, by driving next to it and hoping for the best. We pass one lone human, pouring gravel into a gorge of a pothole. We tell the kids that “‘n boer maak ‘n plan.” They ask, “What’s a ‘boer’” and want to know why they make plans. We tell them that farmers have to adapt to their environment, which isn’t always kind, to get their crops to grow, and sometimes they have to have creative solutions. We tell them that South Africans are good at this. So, if the government won’t fix the potholes, then that guy will. One gorge at a time.
As we drive and drive my mind unravels. The space is almost incomprehensible. Space for its own sake – unfilled, unoccupied. And yet within the nothing, there is a deep presence – of God, of life. Space to just be.
We visit the Valley of Desolation in Graaff Reinett – standing on the mountain we look down on the land, like gods. But the height is an illusion. We are small. The tremendous sky swallows us into its vastness. And we are happy there, in our smallness, but time waits for no one and dessert becomes sea.
The ocean is alive – gurgling quietly or roaring passionately, it is never quiet. It calls. Looking out over the horizon, I wonder what it would have been like to land on these wild shores. A place so beautiful and unknowable that the urge to know and to claim, as is our nature, overwhelms an inherent truth that Africa cannot be tamed, or claimed. It is a land unto itself.
It’s also a land with plough snails. Many many plough snails. Initially, I thought they were cute, until I saw them demolish a blue bottle. Literally hundreds of snails Usain Bolting along the sea sand in some kind of feeding frenzy – the Portuguese Man o’ War their unsuspecting prey. I soon learnt that said Man o’ War does not live up to its name. Plough snails pile onto their victim and, with some kind of soggy proboscis, suck, chew and dissolve until it’s as if the blue bottle never was. Merciless. Ruthless and disgusting but also kind of awesome. And mesmerising. Tracking blue bottles all over the beach to watch them being demolished becomes a daily activity in our beach days along the East Coast…
…until the Langeberg draws us back in, wrapping around us in the haven of Montagu, daring us to escape its rugged height and breadth. We are happy prisoners – revelling in wine and steak and sun, drunk on the land, drunk on life.
We end in Simon’s Town.
Sitting in in the bougie Ohana Café in Kalk Bay waiting for coffee and cake, I watch a man walk alongside the train track. Where is he going? What life has he lived to bring him to this exact moment – the possibilities are infinite yet there is only one truth. A second at a time, he vanishes into the distance. Just as a train passes, setting up the perfect metaphor. Our journey is almost over.
“Why don’t we live here, mom?”
We tell our five children that real life South Africa is not the dream we’ve been living. We tell them that they will have more opportunities in England, we tell them that the government is less corrupt, there’s a million times less crime and that the infrastructure still works, and that not every dog in sight wants to eat you. We come up with all sorts of logical, practical reasons why we don’t live at home. And they are all valid but ultimately, Africa is not a head thing. It’s a heart thing.
It’s an unquantifiable love… for thunderstorms, orange suns, Acacia thorns, shongololos, the ocean crashing on rocks, petrol attendants, bakkies, cream soda, biltong, rugby, warthogs, conversation and, and, and.
Maybe one day, heart will get to decide.
But for now, we savour every moment.
If you have a story you’d like to share about South Africa please send it to Andrea via admin@sapeople.com; and visit Andrea’s https://livingmzansi.com/