Today I leave Africa to return home.  I know I'm going home because home is where your cat is.  (This was a fact I decided when I was about 12.)

Please pre-forgive me if I get a wee bit emotional or try to be poetical in this post.  I swear I can't help it.  I feel as though my heart is so full it just may burst.  When I look back at the month, I almost don't believe it all really happened.  

For the past months, maybe the last year, I've become this great person at pretending.  My mum was diagnosed with cancer and there was so much that had to be done.  So I did it, and pretended I was someone who was capable.  Then my mummy died.  And I pretended I was going to be okay, because I think you have to do this to keep going.  You don't really believe it, but you pretend you do, or else there's no reason to get up in the morning.  After this I got to pretend that I was the sort of person who up and decided they will volunteer in South Africa for a month.  I was here about a week before I figured out I wasn't pretending this one anymore, I really was in South Africa.  

Yesterday, I got myself to the top of Table Mountain.  This probably shouldn't have been one of the last things on my list as it's one of the biggest draws to Cape Town, but it was a hectic month...  Anyway, I stood on top of the mountain and once more found myself staring in awe at some of the most beautiful vistas I have ever seen.  (This is not an uncommon experience around here.)  At some point, rather without warning, I realized I wasn't pretending anymore.  I really was okay.  

I don't for a second believe I will always be okay from here on in.  Past experience with death has taught me grief is a lot like the ocean.  Sometimes it's calm and quiet, other times it rages, and sometimes it just laps at the shore unceasingly.  But there is a gift in the moments of truly being okay, because eventually they will come more often.  Those moments are a candle in a storm.

My feeling of being okay didn't come as a comparison, which I think I thought it might.  I didn't look at the people of the township and find that they suffered so much more so I should be grateful.  (Along the lines of the idea that if everyone threw their problems into a heap on the floor, you'd be pretty quick to pick your own back up when you saw what everyone else's were.)  Instead I found regular people, surviving and doing their best, just like the rest of us.  People are people, no matter where they live or what their circumstance.  The people of the townships are not to be pitied, though feeling compassion is a different thing entirely.  They are not somehow less because of their homes and meager  belongings.  I think it was this awareness of humanity, the sense of being connected to it, that made me realize I was, and would be, okay.  

I think I have gotten my wish, and found a sense of Ubuntu.  I have affirmed my own humanity by acknowledging that of others.  

I am because we are.  


I do promise one last batch of photos before I stop posting and close this site.  Thank you again for your support and encouragement.  :)