Our final month in Cape Town arrived today. As usual, the South Easter is shoving us around; the grass everywhere is shrivelled brown. Last-minute Christmas shoppers queue at tills and parking pay stations like it's a Coldplay concert. It's crazy busy.
"Thirty sleeps to go," I tell my daughter.
"I don't want to go," she huffs, as usual. "I don't want to leave my friends." She gives me an angry glare.
We've been over this conversation many times in the past few months.
"You'll make lots of new friends," I always console her. "You'll be together for 11 years of school. Think what fun times you'll have." But still, her best friends, who have spent many a day and night in our home since they were toddlers together, seem irreplaceable right now.
We paid for our flights today; yesterday our passports arrived in the post - four shiny, blue visas from Immigration New Zealand in London. The words in our passports, "Permanent Resident" feel like a giant safety net, a second chance in a new country.
For the first time this year, I'm excited. In a month from now, we'll be leaving our lives here, and starting all over again. We won't be on holiday, even though it may feel like that for a few months. No... K will start the hard slog of looking for a job, in a recession. I will get the kids into schools, and carry on with my work. We'll start house-hunting in Titirangi; we'll buy cars and cutlery; we'll track down the best places to buy veggies and art supplies. We'll join the library. We'll study the gardens in Woodlands Park. We'll swim at Cornwallis and Piha beach. We'll climb the Sky Tower, and take photos on One Tree Hill.
My friend, Lisa, says we're like the old settlers - heading off for land we've only heard about, never seen.
Sounds nuts, if you ask me....
Seven years of doubt
It's hard to pinpoint an exact moment when my relationship with my country soured.
Like any relationship gone wrong, the unhappy moments started to outweigh the happy ones. In the beginning, I didn't notice the imbalance. Then I did. Suddenly, in January this year, it seemed as though all my thoughts revolved around "why I'm not happy here anymore". I'd wake up feeling anxious, and fall asleep wondering if we'd hear our kitchen window being smashed by a burglar in the night.
"What you focus on, increases." And all I seemed to focus on were all my reasons for feeling unsafe in SA.
And yet, I felt just like a woman leaving the battle-scarred remains of an abusive relationship, hesitant, terrified of the unknown, saturated in doubts and misgivings. Should I stay, or should I go? Year in, year out.
It seems the last few years I've been waiting for some final straw, some bad experience to justify why we finally are leaving. I haven't noticed how I've moved the bench-posts all along, come up with excuses, made concerted efforts to "make the best of it", wavered and procrastinated.
"Life is just too damn short to keep my kids caged up any longer," I tell K. "It's too short not to enjoy hiking up a mountain without worrying that we'll be mugged."
I want my children to run free, cycle to school, play in the streets, come home in the dark. If there is still a country out there where I'd have to call my kids home at sunset, I want to live in it.
Like any relationship gone wrong, the unhappy moments started to outweigh the happy ones. In the beginning, I didn't notice the imbalance. Then I did. Suddenly, in January this year, it seemed as though all my thoughts revolved around "why I'm not happy here anymore". I'd wake up feeling anxious, and fall asleep wondering if we'd hear our kitchen window being smashed by a burglar in the night.
"What you focus on, increases." And all I seemed to focus on were all my reasons for feeling unsafe in SA.
And yet, I felt just like a woman leaving the battle-scarred remains of an abusive relationship, hesitant, terrified of the unknown, saturated in doubts and misgivings. Should I stay, or should I go? Year in, year out.
It seems the last few years I've been waiting for some final straw, some bad experience to justify why we finally are leaving. I haven't noticed how I've moved the bench-posts all along, come up with excuses, made concerted efforts to "make the best of it", wavered and procrastinated.
"Life is just too damn short to keep my kids caged up any longer," I tell K. "It's too short not to enjoy hiking up a mountain without worrying that we'll be mugged."
I want my children to run free, cycle to school, play in the streets, come home in the dark. If there is still a country out there where I'd have to call my kids home at sunset, I want to live in it.
I can't do this anymore
Isobella and I are picking out bikinis in a factory shop when radio Good Hope blares out a news report about another nine-year-old girl raped and murdered on the Cape Flats. My stomach turns. I glance at Isobella to see if she's overheard the news.
Luckily she's holding up a bright pink swimming costume, her eyes bright and happy. I smile, but it's forced. All that's going through my head are images of what that nine-year-old's last moments alive must have been like. My daughter is 7, just two years younger than the news report victim, her slight body innocent and fragile. What kind of person would tear into the flesh of a child? What is going through his mind? The thoughts are like torture, and I feel leaden and depressed.
"I can't do this anymore" has become a silent mantra over the past few years. I can't cope with baby rape. I don't want to live in a country with the highest baby rape rate in the world. I don't want to be here.
Luckily she's holding up a bright pink swimming costume, her eyes bright and happy. I smile, but it's forced. All that's going through my head are images of what that nine-year-old's last moments alive must have been like. My daughter is 7, just two years younger than the news report victim, her slight body innocent and fragile. What kind of person would tear into the flesh of a child? What is going through his mind? The thoughts are like torture, and I feel leaden and depressed.
"I can't do this anymore" has become a silent mantra over the past few years. I can't cope with baby rape. I don't want to live in a country with the highest baby rape rate in the world. I don't want to be here.
Feb 08 - Crossing the line
We are sitting around the breakfast table, a Saturday morning in early February. I've spent the past few weeks researching motorhomes and castles in the UK, part of planning a three-week holiday in South and South-East England in June. K and I have mapped out campsites and heritage sites, and started showing photos of the areas to our 7-year-old daughter, Isobella. The holiday is a diversion, something positive to look forward to in what has otherwise been a hard year.
But instead of Cornwall forts cheering me up this morning, I'm distracted and anxious. I don't even taste the fried eggs and toast on my plate; just gulp them down. My spirits have been low since Christmas, and I can't seem to shake off this ugly sense of foreboding. Trailing the news of Zuma and proposed land reforms, militant ANCYL, coal power plants in the energy crisis, the aftermath of Polokwane hasn't helped my mood. I can't seem to get away from Google news, as though if I blink, I'll miss some crucial event that will affect my little family forever.
Yesterday evening K had arrived home after his busy week tired, ready for a glass of wine and supper. I told him about an aquaintance of ours who had been strangled in her home a few doors down from ours, and inevitably, we ended up talking about the crime. Again.
"You're obsessed," he fumed after thirty minutes, "and really, you're always being negative. Do you think I like coming home to hear about murders and house-break-ins? I'm really sick of it."
It's so unlike him to get angry; his outburst took me by surprise.
"But Love, it's a reality. Forty families are being attacked in their homes every day, and no-one cares. More than a quarter of a million people have been viciously killed in SA over the past ten years, and no-one is paying attention. We're in a war zone. We're top of the world murder charts - ."
K's shoulders were drooped, his face resigned.
"I'm tired of this conversation too, you know," I told him. "I mean, surely people aren't meant to worry about being murdered in their homes? Surely I'm not supposed to feel scared every time I hang out our washing in the back garden?"
"But why don't you stop it then. It's not good for you, or us."
"I can't," I tell him, "And I don't see things getting any better here. I don't want to spend the next 15 years nervous when Isobella plays in the garden on her own, or scared to pull out of the driveway in case I'm hi-jacked. This isn't life."
He looked at me sadly. "OK, so what are you saying...?"
*************
I didn't used to be scared.
I used to be strong, free, perfectly at home in the mountains and the veld.
When I was 18, and a student at Stellenbosch University, I would spend every holiday working on farms in Wellington, Hex River Valley, Villiersdorp. I would walk for miles up mountains and along farm roads on my own, something I just wouldn't do anymore. One holiday I hitch-hiked 3500 km around Southern Africa with my boyfriend; another, not so long ago, I cycled over 600 km up the West Coast. I slept under the stars, on beaches, next to railway lines, once on a truck-sized haystack where I watched the red sun set and a gold moon rise.
And now I'm scared to hang out my washing. I feel the adrenalin pump every time I open our driveway gate to pull out my car.
We finish breakfast, but last night's conversation keeps gnawing at me. It's preposterous that we are about to spend R100 000 on our first overseas holiday, when in fact we should be saving the money to emigrate.
I try talk to K again while he stacks the dishwasher.
"We're wasting time. We're postponing the inevitable. Adam and Isobella are going to grow up and leave. They won't get jobs here. Our grandkids will grow up in Europe somewhere, like all my cousins and siblings. And what then? What's the point of having kids if we're only going to see them once every few years? I want a family life."
I can see K is listening. We have had this discussion a few times over the past seven years, ever since we brought our newborn Isobella home from the hospital. Every time, we made some excuse to stick it out in SA, give it a chance, make it work.
But it no longer felt like it was working.
This weekend's conversation took us over the indelible line from hope in a future in South Africa, to knowing we had to get the hell out of here.
But instead of Cornwall forts cheering me up this morning, I'm distracted and anxious. I don't even taste the fried eggs and toast on my plate; just gulp them down. My spirits have been low since Christmas, and I can't seem to shake off this ugly sense of foreboding. Trailing the news of Zuma and proposed land reforms, militant ANCYL, coal power plants in the energy crisis, the aftermath of Polokwane hasn't helped my mood. I can't seem to get away from Google news, as though if I blink, I'll miss some crucial event that will affect my little family forever.
Yesterday evening K had arrived home after his busy week tired, ready for a glass of wine and supper. I told him about an aquaintance of ours who had been strangled in her home a few doors down from ours, and inevitably, we ended up talking about the crime. Again.
"You're obsessed," he fumed after thirty minutes, "and really, you're always being negative. Do you think I like coming home to hear about murders and house-break-ins? I'm really sick of it."
It's so unlike him to get angry; his outburst took me by surprise.
"But Love, it's a reality. Forty families are being attacked in their homes every day, and no-one cares. More than a quarter of a million people have been viciously killed in SA over the past ten years, and no-one is paying attention. We're in a war zone. We're top of the world murder charts - ."
K's shoulders were drooped, his face resigned.
"I'm tired of this conversation too, you know," I told him. "I mean, surely people aren't meant to worry about being murdered in their homes? Surely I'm not supposed to feel scared every time I hang out our washing in the back garden?"
"But why don't you stop it then. It's not good for you, or us."
"I can't," I tell him, "And I don't see things getting any better here. I don't want to spend the next 15 years nervous when Isobella plays in the garden on her own, or scared to pull out of the driveway in case I'm hi-jacked. This isn't life."
He looked at me sadly. "OK, so what are you saying...?"
*************
I didn't used to be scared.
I used to be strong, free, perfectly at home in the mountains and the veld.
When I was 18, and a student at Stellenbosch University, I would spend every holiday working on farms in Wellington, Hex River Valley, Villiersdorp. I would walk for miles up mountains and along farm roads on my own, something I just wouldn't do anymore. One holiday I hitch-hiked 3500 km around Southern Africa with my boyfriend; another, not so long ago, I cycled over 600 km up the West Coast. I slept under the stars, on beaches, next to railway lines, once on a truck-sized haystack where I watched the red sun set and a gold moon rise.
And now I'm scared to hang out my washing. I feel the adrenalin pump every time I open our driveway gate to pull out my car.
We finish breakfast, but last night's conversation keeps gnawing at me. It's preposterous that we are about to spend R100 000 on our first overseas holiday, when in fact we should be saving the money to emigrate.
I try talk to K again while he stacks the dishwasher.
"We're wasting time. We're postponing the inevitable. Adam and Isobella are going to grow up and leave. They won't get jobs here. Our grandkids will grow up in Europe somewhere, like all my cousins and siblings. And what then? What's the point of having kids if we're only going to see them once every few years? I want a family life."
I can see K is listening. We have had this discussion a few times over the past seven years, ever since we brought our newborn Isobella home from the hospital. Every time, we made some excuse to stick it out in SA, give it a chance, make it work.
But it no longer felt like it was working.
This weekend's conversation took us over the indelible line from hope in a future in South Africa, to knowing we had to get the hell out of here.
Sep 2008 - The globe
I hold the plump globe we have just bought at Experilab. We sit on our couch, four of us shoved together, peering at the scrap of land we are about to move to. Everyone is very quiet. Even my toddler, Adam, has stopped squirming for a moment, and seems to be frowning at the globe like the rest of us.
"It's very...far, isn't it?" K says. My heart sinks. The slither of New Zealand is exactly on the opposite end of the world, surrounded by almost half of the world's ocean - a piece of flotsam on the rim of the huge Pacific.
"No wonder people say it's isolated," I mutter. "It's literally on the brink of nowhere."
We turn the globe all the way back to SA, point to Cape Town, and tell our children that this is their home. South Africa, the familiar triangle at the foot of a continent.
That triangle of land has been my home for the past 35 years. All the people I've ever known, family, friends, teachers, colleagues, all memories bundled into one geometric shape. And now we are about to leave it behind for a country 20 000 miles away, 20 hours away as an airoplane flies.
Adam and Isobella are somehow aware that this is not a ball for playing with. We gingerly set it up on our side table, and to our surprise, they don't touch it.
It takes us a few days to get used to the location of New Zealand. The maps we previously looked at were in books - flat and feasible. Seeing the two oceans - normally sliced in half at both edges of the page - together shows the true picture - a whole lot of water, and a snatch of land.
I keep telling myself that we are young, that this is a good move, and that there's no turning back. Our application to emigrate went in eight months ago; we're just waiting for the outcome.
"It's very...far, isn't it?" K says. My heart sinks. The slither of New Zealand is exactly on the opposite end of the world, surrounded by almost half of the world's ocean - a piece of flotsam on the rim of the huge Pacific.
"No wonder people say it's isolated," I mutter. "It's literally on the brink of nowhere."
We turn the globe all the way back to SA, point to Cape Town, and tell our children that this is their home. South Africa, the familiar triangle at the foot of a continent.
That triangle of land has been my home for the past 35 years. All the people I've ever known, family, friends, teachers, colleagues, all memories bundled into one geometric shape. And now we are about to leave it behind for a country 20 000 miles away, 20 hours away as an airoplane flies.
Adam and Isobella are somehow aware that this is not a ball for playing with. We gingerly set it up on our side table, and to our surprise, they don't touch it.
It takes us a few days to get used to the location of New Zealand. The maps we previously looked at were in books - flat and feasible. Seeing the two oceans - normally sliced in half at both edges of the page - together shows the true picture - a whole lot of water, and a snatch of land.
I keep telling myself that we are young, that this is a good move, and that there's no turning back. Our application to emigrate went in eight months ago; we're just waiting for the outcome.
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