Hello from the land of infinite toilet paper in public restrooms and buildings with indoor temperature control! lol, I have safely returned to the US and am trying to "be where I am" like I did in SA, but I'm not so certain that this is where I want to be right now. Oh well, I'll chalk it up to the re-entry process.
Unfortunately I don't have pictures from the exact places/moments that I tell stories, but hopefully this will give you a snapshot of the places I reference.
Our Chariot
held building anticipation & really funny stories for 18 hours
Welcome World
mural near Green Market in Cape Town, next to it was the World Cup bracket
Found Object Homes drawing
Some days I wasn't able to write, so I jumped back into my 5th grade self and took up doodling stories that words wouldn't meet, yet
Site B Homes
I took this picture through the back window of Dada's car before he dropped me off @ EduCare for one of my internships. note the sticker
I'd been in the country for no more than 90 minutes and I'd already plummeted from my initial state of giddy anticipation. We'd de-planed, ceremoniously took our first big breath of South African air, collected our baggage (minus 1), met out directors, and loaded the van when it happened. I was riding on the left hand side as we zoomed toward Hillcrest, the bed and breakfast we'd call home for our first 5 days, when I saw informal my first "informal settlement". It went my window, road, grassy patch with cows grazing + boy with stick, graffitied concrete wall, then what seemed like a zillion unfit, shanty structures that I wouldn't call houses, but that I knew were homes. A titled pole would prick the flat-roofed horizon and from it a web of tangled, electric nightmare would droop down to the homes.
It seemed like this scene had been put on "loop" outside my window because it went on kilometer after kilometer. The only reason I knew it was real was when I would catch a goal celebration from a boy playing soccer in a small patch of space between the highway and the graffitied wall, or when I'd see a lanky black dude or thick Mamma walking alongside the highway on a narrow, well beaten path.
My eyes and heart had nearly reached their max when this scene was abruptly interrupted by a squad of blue flashing police lights escorting a FIFA tour bus on the other side of the median. "Ja, we tried to get you guys one of those!" our crazy haired, mysterious co-director laughed. The radio was faintly audible in the background and I heard the announcer proclaim, "FEEL IT! IT IS HERE!!!" with regards to the much anticipated World Cup the country was hosting.
My head returned left and made my eyes look again... "Feel it," my heart said, "we are here..." as if it knew something I didn't.
2 comments:
Hannah!! You are a gift to the world! Everytime I read your writtings, my heart aches, and breaks and longs for more! You have such a gift for making readers 'feel' your experience! I can't wait for the next post! I look forward to more, and talking to you soon! Welcome back! We all missed you!
Reading that amazing blurb brought my first few minutes in India screaming back... what's crazy is that if you took out the FIFA tour bus part it almost exactly explains my experience as well. The confusion of not being able to believe that people really live like that except for the reality of it being right in front of your eyes... It makes me think, if what you saw was so similar to what i saw then how many other countries in the world are also like this... how many other people live like this or at least more along those lines than along the lines of what we're used to seeing...
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