A muddle of contradictions

A question often put to us by friends back home is the ubiquitous “Are you enjoying it there?”
This of course has no easy answer.
Sonja best sums this up with her answer, that “on some days we wonder how we are going to last two years here, while on other days we wonder how we are ever going to be able to move back home.”
Life here is a massive contradiction, and although this is often unnerving, and often pushes you to the edge of reason, I also think this is why it makes you feel so alive, so very unique.
Living in Africa means being tough and resilient. You need to be rough, and robust and very ready to laugh. And more than most places, you need a persistence bordering on irrational stubbornness.
Getting anything done takes more
This is what this great, bubbling, pulsating continent is all about.
And because this amazing and alive place is such a contradiction, there are things you love, and there are things that drive you to the very edge of reason.
And oddly enough, all of this is fluid. It changes. You cannot allow yourself to wan to be in control of even the contradictions. These also belong to Africa.
Something that bursts your chest with a deep and positive passion one week, can make you curse and turn crazy for days on end a week later.
That is why I love the reality of the landscape here. Real Africa. No Attenborough. Just huts, dust, woodsmoke and the normality of lives.
Bouncing along a very dusty and pot holed dirt road, transfixed by the reality of life staring at you in the face. The round huts with their grass roofs and deep green and pink painted walls, the wisps of smoke from fires and the contrast of these amazing indigenous nguni cattle against the pale dryness of the winter grass. This is the essence of Africa. This is what three quarters of Africa looks like. Rural. Poor. With few amenities. Small family homesteads. Mud huts. Grass roofs.
There wasn’t an elephant in site and all the buck had been eaten long ago, but this was truly Africa. And I was lucky enough to be slap bang in the middle of it all, drinking it up with my eyes and my ears, smelling it into me. Smiling to myself in the sun. It wasn’t as sexy as the Serengeti, or a lion kill in Etosha, and these things are amazingly. But this was what Africa really was. Game parks are not what Africa is about. It is what the rest of the world wants us to be. But if you want typical Africa, you won't see a lion. You will see this. Mud huts, grass roofs, small vegetable patches. Women cooking on outside fires. Chickens pecking around and cows observing life. Goats up on the hind legs eating the leaves off a tree.
And lots of curious, loud, smiling, happy, peaceful villagers. Tough and trying to survive and make a living and take care of their families. This is what Africa is all about. And I wanted to gulp it down and breath it through my pores.

When I stopped to take some soil samples, I wanted to taste the soil. Instead I rubbed it and breathed in its dust quickly. Like some coke addict with a bad habit. I did it again, got it in deeply. If I was alone I would have taken handfuls of it and rubbed it all over my face and my neck and my arms. Anointed myself with her soil.
Thandomhlaba. Lover of the soil. Lover of earth.

And the people. Smiling, caring, gentle people. Who are demonstrative. Men who hold my hand when they talk to me. Women who rest their hands on my arms and shoulders. People who make me feel part of them and cared for. Children who visit us all the time. Always a small excuse to come and be with you. Join you in what you are doing. Everyone so quick to smile and laugh. Loud talking, long greeting. Simple. A sense of community like I have never experienced.
Except some days these same people will drive me to distraction. Make me curse and swear.
Children I wish I could scatter to be gone always. But that is how it is.
A complex contradiction that you simply experience and allow yourself to be truthful about how it makes you feel at any particular time.
And the beauty and the poverty. Beauty like you only thought Hollywood could conjure up. White beaches, lagoons, green forest. Birds, rolling grassland. Paradise. Exotic, large horned African cattle.
But paradise dotted with small mud huts with dung floors, living eight to a room with no electricity, toilets running water. HIV, TB and dehydration for room furniture.

But God I love this place. When I am not wanting to burn it down and get away from it, then I love it in a way makes my expressions about it redundant.
I cannot express how proud I am of being part of Africa, and being an African. How proud and glad I am my children are African. How much I love and feel a connection with everybody who plants their feet in her soil, and fights everyday, to make a success of their own small African corner.
We are an exciting and dynamic place.
Being here makes me feel alive a hundred different times every day.
I haven’t missed a sunrise since we moved here.
One hundred times per day to thank whoever is out there, that I am here, and not somewhere with a low sky and order and calm and a schedule..
I need the unexpected. The unknown. The contradictions.
One last contradiction of the highest order.
I love being alive here so much, I wish I would die her.
If I had to die.
I mean if you 100% put a gun to my head and told me I had to die. This is where I would want it to be. This is where there is no fear for me. Only a feeling of being whole.
Amongst this landscape. Amongst these caring people.
This would be a good place to die.
If it doesn't drive me crazy first.