How to end a journey

We have been home for a week now, normal life fast sweeping and drawing us into its folds. Our days fill up with things to do, shops to go to, people to see and greet, and naturally we miss the simplicity of being on the road.

'Tell us the best story of your trip' or 'did you ever feel unsafe?' or 'what was it like not having any responsibilities?' The last one is easy. It feels wonderful. We were less stressed. Had less obligations. We went where we wanted and we stayed as long as we liked. It was a fantastic feeling and we could see each other relishing that freedom.

But what happens now? We save up for the next trip, haha. But we also missed being useful. Living the life in Africa is great, but having a job and a home is wonderful as well. Don't quote me on this in a few weeks, but we are excited to get back to work, to ask how can we make a difference, to try and leave this place better than it was before. Having no responsiblities isn't sustainable, unless you want to end up being homeless.

There is a saying that reads 'If you hold a cat by its tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.' Similarly, the blessings and lessons of travelling can only be received through the doing thereof.

But here are a few things we learned

~we learned that Africa is enormous

~we learned how to greet people

~we learned how to bargain

~we learned that you need much less chemicals on your face and hair to be beautiful and healthy

~we learned how to drive slowly

~we learned to value municipal services, especially the pipe infrastructure that brings fresh water to your door and the one that takes sewage away. We saw more than one village with government signs reading 'this village is now an open defecation free zone'. It makes one thankful.

~we learned that trash is really hard to get rid of when there is no garbage truck or landfill. So it is good to have less of it.

~we learned that development comes at a price

~we learned that heat, rain, lightning, insects and cold are forces to be reckoned with. Nature doesn't come lightly packaged.

~we learned how to identify birds and photograph the stars

~we learned how to dramatically lower the threshold for taking offence

~we learned that there are good people everywhere

~we learned to give each other space

~we learned to trust that God's ways aren't our ways. We don't know why some people have car accidents and others not, why some travelers get malaria and others don't and why people suffer terribly all over the world. We have to trust that dying isn't the worst thing that can happen to a person, and that staying alive isn't all that matters.

~mostly we learned that loving the world is more important than trying to understand it.

Thank you for sharing in our journey. We would love to share some more stories, photos (and paintings) from our trip with you in due time. But for now, happy festive season and kwaheri!*













Sent from my iPad

Back to the future - the final stretch

Although subtle for the first few days, the reality of being back in South Africa is becoming stranger than fiction; futuristic roads, broad, smooth and flawless, with our car gliding along like a hovercraft from the future; glittering shops with endless goods in decadently coloured packaging, avant garde Christmas decorations adorning subtle wood-and-steel-shop-displays; shops dedicated to beautifying 'the home'.

Bizarre objects on sale like silicone spatulas specifically made for turning flapjacks; rows of eerily identical box houses called lifestyle complexes, shimmering against clipped, grassy green hills and outlined by stylishly built fences; white-skinned people wearing impractical clothes, sitting at pinterest restaurants, waiting for someone to take a photo.

As bizarre as travelling in Africa has been at times, coming back has to be twice as strange. At least, the upper class Northern suburbs of Durban where we are at the moment seems quite foreign to anything we've seen in 6 months.

Apart fom the 'neatness' and 'containedness' of everything (and so much else), we seem to be transitioning from a human-sized environment to a car-sized one (Bill Bryson talks about this in his book about growing up the 50s). Modern life is designed around motorvehicles, how they drive, where they can park, how fast they can move. Buildings and roads are scaled accordingly, and walking can feel like a clumsy and dangerous activity.

As Lindie and I were walking the short distance from the mall to the car wash yesterday my heart was buzzing like a bumble bee, with cars the size of monsters coming from all directions. The side walk stopped at one of the intersections, and we found ourselves frantically crossing the curb of a fast-food-drive-thru just to be barred by the garden hedge around the parking lot. We felt out of place on our feet. We felt 'naked' compared to the robot shuttles whirling around. And everyone else was in a rush, going faster than humanly possible.

Everywhere August and I traveled, with the exception of the major cities, pedestrians still dictated the environment's form and function, and the motorvehicle driver must adapt to the pace, and scale, of life on foot, frustrating as it may be. Now we enter a maze of robotesque machines, whizzing people from their home to the shops and back, with people never seeming to touch the earth, never walking on uneven terrain, getting muddy shoes or having to share the road with grazing animals or meandering plants. Modern people 'hover'.

Maybe that's why at home our clothes and shoes seem to last years but on the trip they deteriorated within months. We touched the world a bit more.

From Durban we plan to escape the malls and its madness, driving up to the beautiful Drakensberg area before cruising down slowly towards the Cape. It was super great to meet up with Michelle Duncan, a friend from Stb, and Chris and Lindie van der Burgh (our wedding photographers) in Salt Rock. And of course the modern world has its perks, we've had our first gloriously tumble-dried clothes and towels in months (aaah the softness), and we've been gorging ourselves on gourmet cheese, rusks, sushi and water (from the tap!). Greetings from the future, Y&A