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.
No comments:
Post a Comment