LEARNING.

Signals are everywhere. It has been more than a year that I updated my blog, my journal is left untouched in my bedside table; here I am a person who dreams to be a writer who hasn’t written more than some press releases and mails. Maybe once in a while inspired I wrote a nice message to a friend in the distance or describing in my best words my life after a year and a half in South Africa but that’s it. Now thanks to a couple of movies: “Julie and Julia”, “Letters to Juliet”, “Eat Pray and Love” and even “Motherhood,” I noticed how much I miss doing this: WRITING; especially when I have written the last 7 lines without stopping much to think.

It has made me wonder why most of the Expats I have met as well as the blogs sometimes I read of other woman who are far away include one chapter in their life’s in the distance where they seem to loose their own interests, where who you are is put on stake, and even on hold to give way to adapting and surviving in the distance. And that is maybe the answer, adapting is the first thing, a purely survival tool and then finding yourself again in a different and complex environment of what you were used back home. Never easy and definitely takes some time.

So here I am one year and a half later that I left Colombia following my husband to a country which we may consider far away depending of course if you don’t live in Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. One year and a half in South Africa and I wish to say that now I am over the survival phase and now I feel at ease and I am not driving myself or Berend completely crazy with constant meltdowns,crisis and ramblings of: “ I hate this country” to “I miss everything and everyone”and once in a while: "I want to go back to Colombia or Netherlands" fit and confusing him or myself 5 minutes later with things like: "Well is not that bad here", "Is a beatiful country,isn`t it?" "We are doing quite well ,right?" rush of positivism.

But no. I can`t say it proudly because I am far away from that. God, works in mysterious ways and in good ways...depends of course on your perspective. When I started updating the blog I was writing down that I was now a proud citizen of Pretoria,South Africa...but today, after a month...I can only say...that life is teaching me that you always can do better, that there are things to learn, that you may think you are doing something well..and it turns out that you are not and that actually every day is giving me a chance to be a more complete wife and person.

If something...this country...God, this distance is teaching me that: Be humble. Cherish everything you don´t have: public transport, Internet 24 hours, electricity all the time, no garbage on the street, the silence. Learn every day, sometimes in the hard way and sometimes in an easy way things like: Look for wisdom in God, transform what you can, enjoy the time people give you, recognize your mistakes, recognize your own complications and live on. And definitely understanding that my weakness don't define me, but I can learn from them, my mistakes are not the only thing I do but I can find comfort on the fact that they will allow God work through me to change me and give me more faith

We are in our way to change our lives again as we know them. I am happy and blessed I have a wonderful and amazing husband beside me who loves me in spite of me and now as a promise to Berend I will write more again on this blog. Expressing myself, healing through words and mainly putting down the beautiful and complex path we are close to embark. Another quest,hence scary but appealing, overwhelming but beautiul..and well...maybe I will one day say...I am 100% okay and I have learned what I needed to learn...but then of course that will be boring right?

Trying to Adapt, Trying to Adapt and Yes, Trying to Adapt!

There. I click send. That is my next attempt to find a job in a foreign country that now I call home. Is a new issue for me. I have never really looked for a post before. Being a teacher came as a recommendation from my sister and I was immediately hired and from then on 10 years later I was teaching and I have been a volunteer as long as I remember, I applied before to other jobs but I was in the comfort zone of having an income. I call it the syndrome of “Convincing Yourself while Convincing Others.” I decided to convince myself that looking for a job is a way to convince others that I am doing something. But I discovered that I am doing something. People ask me over and over again what am I doing here in Tshwane, Pretoria, South Africa And I proudly tell them that I am busy…that well I am volunteering, I am teaching some hours Spanish, I am writing and reading when in my mind I am saying...well…I am trying to adapt…and trying to adapt and oh yes trying to adapt. Yes, a job sounds good but does anyone know except probably expats and students aboard how much energy is spent every single day trying to acclimatize to a country?

How can you explain that “busy” when you are in another country which is not yours means that now you are in charge of a home, that takes all the energy of the world to create social networks and even assisting to social events when you are still struggling with accent and the fact that people speak apart from English and Afrikaans other ten languages?(And I thought I spoke a lot of languages…yeah whatever!) How can you define “trying to adapt” as a 24 hour shift? Well it is.

Lets start with the basic: going shopping. Sounds fun right? Yes. If you know where you can buy things and what things to buy. But finding the right shop, the correct prices, the precise food, budget analysis, security issues, scrutiny of which ones look close enough to the ones you used back home and deal with the frustration of finding that some of them don’t even exist in this country takes hours. “How can you expect me to survive without the shampoo I used in Colombia?” I say to Berend with almost tears in my eyes and he answers, “It’s a mystery.” And yes. Is a mystery because I have been able to survive without that and without many things I thought were basic but boy it is like I have been working for 120 hours per week!

Is like reading the newspaper. I used to read the newspaper every day. So I started buying it here. Bad idea. It has so many horrifying stories that it feels like I am reading a tabloid and just increased my fear in 200%( El Espacio for those in Colombia). Hence I had to change that routine. Now I read a web page that chooses the main news of South Africa (which unfortunately still include terror stories but not so much) and I read the newspapers from my country. So instead of having my breakfast with the newspaper, I have coffee with the computer. It makes a good combination but I miss having the newspaper delivered to my door and jump in bed on Sundays and read it without having to turn my computer on. That adds other 100 hours!

We are proudly still in love with each other completely but dealing with a bicultural marriage in a culture completely different from ours is a whole project. As an example we both love watching movies but finding movies when you live downtown has been a whole quest. Many of the films come from and Nigeria, which for our taste are not the best, and many of them have a whole spectrum of violence. If we want to buy some other type we have to go by car to a bigger and nicer shopping mall and both of us don’t even remotely like cars or even enjoy driving! So we are “using” our friend’s volunteers from the foundation to move us around while we…okay…while Berend gets more confidence driving. Me…well…I am trying to understand the fact that people drive on the right side…and not feel completely panicked when someone turns thinking they are going the wrong way!

I have done fun things, I have learnt how to play African Drums, we have been to Soweto Gospel Choir, as part of TLF (Tshwane Leadership Foundation) we were involved in the Feast of the Clowns. I was in charge of the main desk in the 20.000 people event and joined the Counter Trafficking Campaign against Human Trafficking and the New Debate about Homelessness. I have been to movies, to eat out (finally we had Chinese food it was a whole thing finding a Chinese Restaurant, not so much again around down town), invited friends over, made friends, went playing board games for a weekend near Krugesdorp, been to the zoo, been to museums. But I also have been sick for over four weeks. Some kind of virus and infection in my throat and my body, have I said this before? Trying to adapt!

Every day that seems 48 hours has its ups and downs. Over and over sending my CV, making calls, writing to the friend of someone, going to the places to hear or read over and over again: we will contact you if there are posts or we will contact you and well sometimes nothing happens. Even the day of the main event of the Feast of the Clowns I had to take care of a child whose mother had left him in charge to his 12 years old sister who decided to leave him alone in the middle of 20.000 people. We later found out that the mother was completely alcoholic.

It is how it is. I have a life here. Trying to Adapt. I am now learning to take it slowly. That is also a big effort. I have always worked, studied and volunteered at the same time. For the first time God has given me the possibility to be able to only be a volunteer and read as much as I want and even write as much as I want. Is difficult to teach yourself to be calm when I have worked many days in Colombia from 6 in the morning to 11 in the night. Is a permanent learning, a permanent teaching from God and life. Faith has increased in amazing levels in me because here everything is very fragile and nothing is for sure so you can only depend on God. We have good conversations and prayer seems even and even more the best option.

We are heading to our third month here. And trying to adapt is becoming more and more as Adapted! Still so much to learn and assume. But now I am proudly looking for Chutney at the supermarket and have for snack biltong in our cupboard. I will probably start driving in some weeks…