I’m raising two boys two and a half years and nearly 8,000 miles away from the country that runs in their veins.
The blood red dust of the Karoo, the ostrich, the meerkat, the hadida. Thick accents and thicker maize meal cooked in three legged black pots over open fires.
And the smell of it all. The smells linger in my memory the longest.
Late winter veld fires burning up the horizon. Smoke and traffic and dust. They grit up the nostrils. But then there’s the jasmine. Sweet promise of spring. When I catch it on the breeze here in the States, miles from home, it buckles the knees and takes me back to my mother’s garden, to my childhood.
And I watch my boys growing up without these sights and sounds and smells and I ache for what they don’t know they’re missing. So we recreate. We build up a library of music and food and photographs. And we dance.
Oh how we dance.
We gum boot dance and stomp and ululate wild to these Northern skies. And we hear a distant echo rise from below the equator bringing greetings from the Southern Cross. We dance and clap wild, lost souls singing their way home across the night sky, feeling our way back into a place that skype can’t properly capture and that email can’t possibly contain.
As if everybody knows
What I’m talking about
As if everybody would know
Exactly what I was talking about
Talking about diamond dust on the soles of tired shoes. Talking about Ladysmith Black Mambazo and how we are all homeless, moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake. Homeless and dreaming of jacaranda trees, a steep driveway and the honey rock house.
Talking about two blond boys and their mama keeping time to the heartbeat of home that’s just a sunrise away.
So we chase it. We run and dance and dream ourselves there. Because one day we will walk that steep, steep South African drive again. And I’m determined it will feel familiar under their feet.
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Oh, you captured so much of what I remember of Africa–the sights, the smells, the flowers, the people, the rhythms. When I was 16 my mother took my two younger brothers and me to the land where she grew up, and indeed we feel that place is a part of our lives, our heritage, our spirits. Your boys will know and love South Africa too, I just KNOW it. That’s because your love for your homeland is so rich and deep. It is contagious!
May you get to return home soon!
Ahhh, you are gonna make me cry. You made me realize what an amazing privilige it is to be living in this beautiful land of South Africa. I will never take it for granted. I don’t even know what I miss, but I pray that God continues to make this place feel like home for me…
Sometimes it takes leaving to really miss something. And then coming home, well, it’s like magic.
It’s a tough job isn’t it… helping them thrive where they are, be thankful for all that life in the states provides, but remember (with fondness and cherished memories) the place from which they came… at least that’s where I am with two Cochabambinos that I call sons who I will always work hard to remind where they came from, their roots, their birthplace!
Yes, it stretches us and gives us fresh eyes and challenges us to show them how to feed their roots, even while planted in foreign soil.
you describe her so perfectly, my sweet africa…
and i can’t tell you how much i wish i could fly you back there for a visit. i love your heart, my friend.
I understand why you miss this place – I adore it and neve want to leave. I’m a Canadian living in SA:http://fredhatman.co.za/?p=3000
Oh, it’s so lovely to meet you! Please have a slice of melk tert and a swig of appletizer for me!!
Nice to meet you too! And yes, I’ll certainly have a tert and some appletizer (but I think I prefer the peartizer now)
Here is an old blog post about my first impressions of Cape Town – hope it brings back some nice memories:
http://dirussell.com/2010/04/25/impressions/
You just described home…not home for me, but the feeling of home for anyone.
Oh, I’m so glad you got that. Yes, sharing home – and how it impacts every sense – that’s what I was going for.
I have never been to South Africa, but your vivid depiction of your heart’s home makes me feel like I’m there. I love the idea of making our place of roots “familiar under the feet” of our children. I do the same thing for my babies.
BEAUTIFUL.
Maybe your military gypysing ways will get you down south one of these days, eh?
I am gonna go home tonight to my five month old baby boy and do the gum boot and stomp , and create a rhythm to your story. I can see my boy now jumping and smiling. For us, and from your words and soul, that will be authentic.
This took my breath away.
lol, I was responding when the power went off… haha, Round 2:
South Africa misses you too! I also love this country and your words express the passion so beautifully. I also love the hadida’s cry and the potjie’s lekker kuier around the fire. God bless you Sus, and please let me know when you finally come. I will gladly grab a Kalula flight to JHB to hug your neck. Or maybe I can meet you in DC. . . ?
The Lord knows you need a visit home and will work it out in His time. I pray it’s soon.
x
Oh me too! It is very unusual for us to have been away so long. But traveling with two kids is a lot more, well, everything, than traveling with none
Hey cuz, I read this blog to my kids and just cried. How I miss you!! This is why I LOVE AFRICA. Come back. My arms ache for you, Pete and your boys. Love you like crazy.. Kim
Oh Kimmy, I miss you deep and I miss you wide.
I confess, I save your blog posts for last because they are just my favorites.
I remember when I first met my husband, I drove him all around my city in the middle of the night. I walked him through my high school and made him stop and smell orange groves. I wanted to share home with his senses. I think that need–to share home–is one of our deepest ways of loving.
You have to come back… even for a visit… I have to meet you one day!
Smoke in the air–
not pine or ash or some North American tree
a tropical smoke smokier than smoke–
permeates my skin, my hair, my soul
Hard red dirt
turns everything a shade of orange
but resists the probing roots of all but the hardiest
Trees looking like broken umbrellas
Baobabs sleekly reaching for the sky roots in the air
Banyans searching for the earth
Mango trees straight out of every child’s tree drawing
Bright colors on dark skin
fingers floating across cloth
flowers better left in the ground than captured for a vase
Bats pinging
Djembes keep the rythm of the night
while fire crickets threaten sanity
and ceiling fans purring and whirring invite sleep
I know my own version of what you’re talking about
. . . and if you don’t mind, I think I just wrote today’s blog post . . .
Oh beautiful South African poetry, yes! You are speaking my language. Those baobabs, they beckon me home!
*sigh*
*sigh*
I miss my Africa…especially the smells…oh those pungent, flavorful smells…nothing can compare to the smell of Africa
*sigh*
How about I let you smell me tomorrow over coffee {hee hee} Would that help?
Thank you for weaving together beauty for me to celebrate and remember to enjoy while I am here in your beloved SA! I don’t think I can describe my beloved far-away America with quite the same beauty just yet… “The glorious hotdogs in my hometown, my favourite Cajun restaurant, Bojangles….”
It would have to include an ode to Mexican food – we just don’t really do that right in SA.
Just beautiful. Africa will be theirs, too. After reading this, I feel like it’s even a teensy bit mine, and I’ve never set foot on the continent.
Oh I love that, thank you.
nothing like home, i missed it so much when I was in the UK
Oh I love Ladysmith Black Mambazo!
After having just posted a World Cup promo video on my blog, with the animals playing soccer. And then reading this post of yours has returned that thick, yearning ache for Africa that few words can describe, and only those priveledged enough to have spent some time there, can understand. But your words certainly hit the mark, it kinda rips out my heart….but in a GOOD way!
It kinda rips out my heart too
I always knew I was blessed to live and love in South Africa – but each time you pour your heart out about it – I am convicted that I take it for granted. The variety, the dialects, the smells and sounds… People can say what they like and call us a Third World country… But this is my home, its where my heart lies deep inside the khakibos,in the jakaranda trees and the call of the hadedas. The taste of rooibos and the smell of mosbolletjies and melktert. I pray the Lord will one day lead you and your family home! For now, as long as this is where your heart lies. Ons dink aan jou, en sal elke oomblik waardeer wat ons het in ons mooiste land.
My hart le diep onder die vlaktes en daar’s niks soos daai khakibos! Ons kom eendag huis toe vir seeker!! Dankie my vriendin.
what an amazing post… i feel the rhythm of the dream with you in spite of never having been there.
Ag ek is seker ek sou ook so gevoel het. SO mooi stukkie skryfwerk.
Baie dankie! Eek ‘n lekker stuk melktert vir my, ne?
Oh, Lisa Jo. This moved me. I confess I’ve read it more than once. It really, truly made me wish I knew “home” the way that you do.
Thank you – home is a hard place to put one’s finger on, isn’t it? For me sometimes I think it’s certain sounds and smells and faces, more than certain places. But, then, I realise how much I miss the places too…
this is gorgeous. You love it so much – and that will pass to them, even as the years pass away from it.