God’s Country (pt.1)

Loud grumbling thunder starts rolling across the heavy laden night sky. I lounge in a rattan armchair in the subdued light of a wide veranda, glass of exquisite South African wine at my elbow. The warm rain is coming down in sheets, splattering off the dense foliage that hugs the garden. A light breeze picks up and cools my sticky skin, sweet relief after an intensely humid day in Durban. Frogs in the bushes start up their chorus of washboard rattles. Another flash of lightning rips open the darkness, followed quickly by another volley of basitone rumbles and the rain takes on a biblical volume. It is exhilarating.

Unexpectedly, it has been my visit to Durban, rather than my stay in Cape Town, which has resonated more profoundly with my childhood memories of Africa. Cape Town was beautiful, but for me it was more European than African. The hazardous navigating through horrendous traffic took its toll on my nerves, and, having been fed, prior to arriving, a steady trickle of cautionary tales about carjackings and robberies, I was on a constant state of alert. Ultimately, it proved to be an excessively gloomy synopsis of navigating around Cape Town. No miss-haps to report, but my anxiety tarnished my experience of this beautiful city.

Altogether different was our two day trip up north to the winelands. Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. Glorious. Vineyards stretching out as far as the eye can see, forming perfectly symmetrical lines across the valley bed, halted only by the boundary of lush hills. Beautiful colonial Dutch architecture defined the delightful town of Franschhoek from where we boarded the wine tram and spent a day engaged in wine samplings at various vineyards. Half way through I was trolleyed. I recall lots of laughter after becoming firm friends with a couple from the UK and with gay abandon purchasing several bottles of wine. Rickety Bridge (very appropriate given my condition),Leopards Leap, Cape Provence (where we stopped for lunch and Miriam ordered a platter of oysters…I think our credit card started to melt!). But never too much of a good thing, we decided to stay on and booked another night at the beautiful Dirtopia Lodge and Game Reserve and spent another day exploring the delights of SA wineries. Simonsig and Villeria. More purchases of wine crammed into the boot of our car. Fleeting recollections of us having booked our  flight to Durban on an airline called Moogawooga or something equally dubious made me shudder at the thought of how much our luggage might exceed allowance. But only momentarily. Sod it, excess fees would be worth every penny for transporting this elixir of the gods. Next day we checked in at CT airport for our flight to Durban and as expected, the blank faced woman at the counter muttered "8 kilos overweight". I toyed for a moment with saying, "gosh only by looking at me you can tell?" but decided otherwise. We shuffled our precious cargo around among our various pieces of luggage and all was well.

Flying into Durban, with nose pressed against the window, I started to tear up as I scanned the rich green undulating hills below and identified my first recollection of my childhood Africa: thorn trees clustered on hilltops. Not the Flame Trees of Thika, but close enough.
I hardly felt the light thud of tyres hitting the runway. I was already away with the fairies, the same ethereal spirits which had ridden on my determined shoulders and whispered excitedly in my impressionable ears when I once so long ago had scampered through the exotic terrain of my childhood. A landscape of unrestricted adventure, a breeding ground of dreamscapes which only a child born in Africa can relate to.
It's a possessive worm that burrows deep into the core of one's soul. Africa. It's a subtle fever which festers just beneath the radar of being defined as warranting a call for an ambulance, and it never lets you go.

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I am back in Malta now, a month having passed since doing our day-of-departure last minute checks-like did either of us leave the iron on, had we switched off the solar system, had we got all our booking forms printed, and finally kissing the cats goodbye and locking the front door. It feels like a lifetime since then. And for the first time in my life, I'm not quite sure if I am happy to be home. I feel unusually deflated-maybe it's the exhaustion of the long night's journey from Durban to Malta via Istanbul. But as I go about unpacking, readjusting and reorienting myself, I wonder how on earth am I going to adjust? It's a question of scale.

The South African landscape is totally mind-blowing. Even what might be the most mundane for local commuters battling the heaving traffic, driving along the super smooth highways linking urban suburbs, every route lined with dense trees giving way periodically to glimpses of green carpeted hills spreading out majestically in every direction, we are struggling to keep ourselves grounded. When we head out of town to the country, jeezus, it's all super sensory overload in first gear.

God's country, no question about it. If current anthropological research is proving incontrovertibly that the human species originated in Africa, I am so not surprised. What an intoxicating space for the human soul to have drawn its first breath. Like I did. You can't shake it, and why would you want to? You'd have to be seriously messed up to even want to try. For a moment, forget the colourful language of the overwhelming landscape; close your eyes and listen to the language of the music. It's a foetal dialect recognisable to anyone from any cultural background; it's the rhythm of life one is responding to.. Do yourself a favour: even if just once, trade in a month of Sundays and take off to Africa. You'll never come back. Even if you do.

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land." Desmond Tutu

To be continued…In the meantime for your listening pleasure, get an earful of this: Brenda Fassie, a SA legend apparently, and not surprisingly.