Coming home to South Africa

Arriving in Johannesburg back on January 25th felt great!  Prior to coming to South Africa in 2012, a friend of mine said to me, “Once you’ve been to South Africa, you’ll always be a little homesick for it.”  And, that’s been true for us.  Arriving in South Africa felt as if we were coming back to our second “home.”

I smiled as I experienced each of the “little things" that I had forgotten – such as people saying “pleasure” in response to a thank you, or being called “Mama” as an respectful rather than a wolfish comment, or as I rented the car and was the sole legal driver – walking to the right hand door to get behind the wheel, shifting with my left hand, and carefully navigating through the “robots” as I drove away from the airport in the left lane.

Our guesthouse host

It felt great being back in South African sunshine, blue skies and great air.  We stayed at a wonderful guesthouse for our first four days – with gorgeous gardens and super breakfasts.  (I have yet to stay at a guesthouse or B and B in South Africa that hasn’t been charming.  Sometime I’d love to do a non-time limited road trip across South Africa, stopping at B & B’s as I went.)

Our host spoke Afrikaans as his first language, and learned his fluent English through reading literature.  He was a font of knowledge about the area.  I was so happy to hear how positive he was for the future of South Africa, and how well he feels the country has done in improving race relations.  As one “proof point,” he cited one statistic saying that over 300,000 whites who fled South Africa after it became a full democracy returned last year and plan to stay.   

My only heartbreak:  When I unpacked my suitcase, I found my jewelry had been stolen from my checked luggage.  It was my own dumb fault for not hand carrying it.  Lost were some of my favorite things, including the jewelry I wore to Emily’s wedding, the blue sapphire earrings that had just been handmade for me in Myanmar, my only gold chain that Jim gave me long ago, and the one piece of costume jewelry I had of my mother’s.