Washington, DC is at it's most beautiful at this time of year. Spring has sprung and between rubs of my itchy eyes I am repeatedly awed by the Natural world in this area. One of the best things about DC is how green it is, leafy neighbourhoods, tree lined avenues, circles that are parks, and a multitude of monuments, surrounded by trees, lawn and tulips.
Just as DC is at its most giving, we received a letter on Tuesday telling us that we are going home. At last, finally, after three years of being "when-we's" we are returning to Namibia. What I felt when I read the letter was a combination of fear and exhiliration and elation. The latter two are obvious, returning to what I so often, with a slip of the tongue, call Home. Fear, though, I felt fear that this was not true, that somehow it was an elaborate prank. To make myself believe it to be true I sent text messages to those nearest and dearest to me to tell them, my mother, father, sisters, my two friends who I have been close to since I was 6. Imagine them as they grumpily awaken, look at their phones and then go back to sleep.
I also called my closest friends here in DC. They work at the same place, and they called me back and put me on speaker phone. They were then so ecstatic that at one point I couldn't distingiush one girlish voice from the other. They were so thrilled for me because they are both foreigners in a friendly land too and perfectly understand the heavy sadness that comes from not seeing your mother for long periods of time. Towards the end of the phone call when we three had sufficiently calmed down, they suddenly remembered that this would be goodbye for a time.
So did I. We have no idea when or for how long we will retun to the states, and if we do so, whether we will return to this fair city. Washington has started to feel like a substitute mother to me. I recognize her moods, when she wants to play and there are crowds picnicing and playing frisbee on the mall, which is her heart. I also recognize the windy, grey days in winter where we all rush from indoors to indoors, putting on coats and taking them off again again and again. On when you leave the house, off when you ride the bus, on between bus and Metro, off in the metro, on for the walk to work and then they are discarded on your spare chair till hometime.
There is so much going on in DC that we frequently deliberately ignore her on a friday night and vegetate on the couch to watch Numbers. We have attended concerts, I have seen the hair-raising Tracy Chapman twice, gone to Zoo lectures, frolicked on the Mall and walked up and down 16th street absorbing the chilled Saturday atmosphere.
DC is also the center for places that have influenced my childhood, and then adulthood. National Geographic headquarters are here. So are WWF, CI, TNC, African Wildlife and so many other's. I am still awed when I attend National Geographic events, readings by famous conservationists, photo exhibits, and I get to meet these people! Of course, I would have absolutely nothing to say to them if I had not had my beginnings in Africa, and in Namibia. The Owens blithely told me how they have repeatedly crashed their plane in Namibia, a fact which made my heart warm to them even further.
A charmed life is what we have led while living here and I know, from experience, that even if we move back everything will be different. Which is making me greedy for the life here. I feel that right now I should be riding through Rock Creek park and tonight I must go to the WWII memorial to be enchanted by its fountains. I still have 7 months and some change here, one summer, half a winter and what is left of spring and I want to enjoy the things I have already done, and loved, and still there is so much to discover. One day, when we come back I hope DC will still be the rebellious, integrated and scintillating city that is the soul, when you get past Capital Hill and the lobbyists.
At 1:35 in the morning, my cell phone rang on my bedside table. It was my Mom and sisters. They had woken up to find my messages and were so excited that they had to call me immediately, despite the cost and the time of night, day... whatever. Their excitement equals mine. Soon I will be there, with them, watching the sunset over dusty Windhoek, sipping gin and tonic. Maybe I can teach my family the card game that I play incessantly with my friends here, while we watch the sun go down, and sip gin and tonics. Really, what you love will happen wherever you are, as long as you love wherever you are.
While I write this Abdullah Ibrahim's "homecoming song" is playing. The drums beat like my heart at the happy thought of seeing red sand dunes and smelling the ozone after the rain. The saxophone and trumpet play a tune so that you feel like your feet should be doing a complicated quick step, but somehow there is a mournful note there. The joy of Homecoming will always mean that I am leaving something else behind and Dollar Brand has captured that emotion in this song.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Hazel Rusthoi
My maternal Grandmother would have been eighty eight on Sunday, were she still alive. My Mother told me this over the phone and I blithely kept speaking about the trivia of my life brushing over this comment as if it were another dust bunny in the path of my broom. As often happens, the comment stayed with me after the phone call, and is with me still, three days later.
Hazel, I have her first name as my second, so does my Mother. I like to think that Hazel started a new tradition in our family, a family with precious few traditions. I will gift my first born daughter with the second name Hazel, and she will do the same for hers and so on and so on until we run out of first born daughters. Hazel is a cumbersome name for a young girl, and I am relieved that it was my second name and not my first. As it was, "Hazel nut" was always a favourite with the teasing boys. Although I am sure that my daughter will suffer less, what with names such as "Apple" and "Tullulah Belle" hanging around. Although I must confess to secretly being a little jealous of Tullulah, it rolls of the tongue so conviently, and yet, how do you teach a small child to say her name when it is that complicated for the mouth to form?
My Grandmother, my namesake, was an incredible woman, she told me that she became a teacher at age 13. To this day I am sceptical of the tale, I cannot imagine a 13 year old girl controlling a class of sniffing, whining and bored children, and then managing to make them learn something! I have stood in the front of a classroom, between the desks and the blackboard, chalk in hand, and there is no place more terrifying and exhilirating. Well teacher or not at age 13, I do know that she was a teacher, and even a Headmistress, and one of the first Coloured women to be head of a School in Apartheid South Africa.
Which segues neatly to more of her incredibleness. Like many women during that era she was fighting her government for every part of her life, her right to marry the man she loved, even if he was white, the right to work where she wished, to live where she wished, to travel where she wished, and for the same for her children, and thankfully, for her grandchildren. She did this by supporting her husband in his rebellion, cared for her four children and gave something invaluable to the children that she taught.
To me she was a strict maths teacher on my school holidays. She was the smell of baked bread. It was almost the only time in our house when the bread was not store bought. She had brown hands with long fingers, her skin smoothly soft and you could slide it around on the back of her hand. Her hands were so strong, and even close to her final sickness and death, she could hold your hand so tight.
My favourite memories of her are when she visited us in Namibia and we would lie on her bed, while she smoked and drank her brandy slowly, slurping slightly and enjoying the flavour thoroughly. That is when, if we begged suitably, she would tell us stories. I have always wished that I remembered them more clearly. I could never perfectly guess what type of creatures the stories were about, but I do remember that they lived under a tree, and they had a wayward son called Timmy and that every story had a moral to it. Like Aesops fables, but smelling of brandy, cigarettes and Oil of Olay, and, if we were lucky, granny smith's boiled sweets. Mr and Mrs Snodgrass. Of course I now know that my well read and well educated Grandmother must have picked this name out of a Dicken's memory the first time she told the stories. My Mother's favourite author is Dickens. I wonder if this is because she was taken to enchantment in a meadow under a tree with Mr and Mrs Snodgrass's troubles with Timmy.
Thank you Granny for warmth and discipline and thank you also, for my Mother.
Hazel, I have her first name as my second, so does my Mother. I like to think that Hazel started a new tradition in our family, a family with precious few traditions. I will gift my first born daughter with the second name Hazel, and she will do the same for hers and so on and so on until we run out of first born daughters. Hazel is a cumbersome name for a young girl, and I am relieved that it was my second name and not my first. As it was, "Hazel nut" was always a favourite with the teasing boys. Although I am sure that my daughter will suffer less, what with names such as "Apple" and "Tullulah Belle" hanging around. Although I must confess to secretly being a little jealous of Tullulah, it rolls of the tongue so conviently, and yet, how do you teach a small child to say her name when it is that complicated for the mouth to form?
My Grandmother, my namesake, was an incredible woman, she told me that she became a teacher at age 13. To this day I am sceptical of the tale, I cannot imagine a 13 year old girl controlling a class of sniffing, whining and bored children, and then managing to make them learn something! I have stood in the front of a classroom, between the desks and the blackboard, chalk in hand, and there is no place more terrifying and exhilirating. Well teacher or not at age 13, I do know that she was a teacher, and even a Headmistress, and one of the first Coloured women to be head of a School in Apartheid South Africa.
Which segues neatly to more of her incredibleness. Like many women during that era she was fighting her government for every part of her life, her right to marry the man she loved, even if he was white, the right to work where she wished, to live where she wished, to travel where she wished, and for the same for her children, and thankfully, for her grandchildren. She did this by supporting her husband in his rebellion, cared for her four children and gave something invaluable to the children that she taught.
To me she was a strict maths teacher on my school holidays. She was the smell of baked bread. It was almost the only time in our house when the bread was not store bought. She had brown hands with long fingers, her skin smoothly soft and you could slide it around on the back of her hand. Her hands were so strong, and even close to her final sickness and death, she could hold your hand so tight.
My favourite memories of her are when she visited us in Namibia and we would lie on her bed, while she smoked and drank her brandy slowly, slurping slightly and enjoying the flavour thoroughly. That is when, if we begged suitably, she would tell us stories. I have always wished that I remembered them more clearly. I could never perfectly guess what type of creatures the stories were about, but I do remember that they lived under a tree, and they had a wayward son called Timmy and that every story had a moral to it. Like Aesops fables, but smelling of brandy, cigarettes and Oil of Olay, and, if we were lucky, granny smith's boiled sweets. Mr and Mrs Snodgrass. Of course I now know that my well read and well educated Grandmother must have picked this name out of a Dicken's memory the first time she told the stories. My Mother's favourite author is Dickens. I wonder if this is because she was taken to enchantment in a meadow under a tree with Mr and Mrs Snodgrass's troubles with Timmy.
Thank you Granny for warmth and discipline and thank you also, for my Mother.
Monday, April 10, 2006
The Decoys vs Rolling Thunder
On Saturday I went Duckpin bowling for the first time. I have been Tenpin bowling a few times, once in England with a memorable visit to the Brighton beach where I was introduced to the concept of not being able to take your shoes off on the beach because of needles, broken beer bottles and other such charmingly hazardous materials. Actually - before I slur the name of Brighton - it may have been Whitstable, I was so disoriented in those days. No Southern Cross you see.
But to return to the subject at hand. Rental shoes. I know that many people before me have covered this topic in a more lavish and humerous manner. I just want to pause briefly on the uncomfortable feeling when your feet sweat in the garish, plastic, tightness that are bowling shoes. The uncomfortable feeling where you have a sinking realisation that multitudes of other people have sweated in the self same shoe, and you find your stomach wishing that a) you had not eaten the deep fried cheese fries as breakfast and b) you had worn thicker socks or c) you had your own pair of bowling shoes.
Once you get over that, and you work out how to brake whilst carrying a heavyish ball, accelerating for only 2 metres and wearing plastic shoes on polished wooden floors, the game is highly enjoyable. I associated the day with so many high school and teenage emotions and cringing insecurites, and also came to terms with a couple of them. The first being the worst, maybe. Teams were chosen "schoolyard style". This means team captains are chosen and with the bouyant relief that comes from choosing rather than being chosen they pick teammates out of the huddled and fear-grinning crowd.
The person before me bowls with competency if not brilliance and now it is my turn. Suddenly I recall why I wasn't in the A team for volleyball, why I didn't play field hockey with my friends, why I chose not to play any team sports. I detest 'letting my team down' with my shocking inabilities. Also, now I am standing in front of about 10 people, all watching my butt, my ass, my hiney. Last time I looked at it myself it was the proverbial traitor with it's ever growing presence. Luckily I look good in these jeans. Which are falling down because I forgot to put on a belt. Should I hitch them up? That requires a completely undignified hip wiggle, and I only have one hand, the other being occupied with a bowling ball in speckled green. But if I don't do the hip wiggle I may end up face down in the lane following my ball into the gutter with my nose. Aargh. Hip wiggle with one hand, switch ball, hip wiggle with other hand, readjust t-shirt for least butt crack protruberance, deep breath, run, brake, swing arm and release. WHY would anyone do this more than once?
Unfortunately, in the interest of 'not letting my team down' I did do it more than once, I may even have done it 14 times. Somewhere in the middle, around #8 or 9 I managed to hit the white things in the middle. Which I was told, with much laughter, was what I should be aiming at. ha ha. There-in is the shining light in bowling of any kind. When you run, brake, swing and release and you have the sweet feeling of successfully coordinating all that perfectly and the ball rolls down the middle of the lane, at just the right speed and with just the right curve, and smacks into the white things and they all go falling down even sometimes, gleefully, knocking each other down. That will make you do it another 7 or 8 times. Just the Hope of that satisfaction is enough to keep you playing, and even to consider returning to the game.
Finally, after 3 hours and two games, I was allowed to remove the offensive shoes and was released, blinking into the sunlight by my team.
PS. As said by House, (brilliant Hugh Laurie) There may be no 'I' in team, but if you mix up the letters, there is 'ME'
But to return to the subject at hand. Rental shoes. I know that many people before me have covered this topic in a more lavish and humerous manner. I just want to pause briefly on the uncomfortable feeling when your feet sweat in the garish, plastic, tightness that are bowling shoes. The uncomfortable feeling where you have a sinking realisation that multitudes of other people have sweated in the self same shoe, and you find your stomach wishing that a) you had not eaten the deep fried cheese fries as breakfast and b) you had worn thicker socks or c) you had your own pair of bowling shoes.
Once you get over that, and you work out how to brake whilst carrying a heavyish ball, accelerating for only 2 metres and wearing plastic shoes on polished wooden floors, the game is highly enjoyable. I associated the day with so many high school and teenage emotions and cringing insecurites, and also came to terms with a couple of them. The first being the worst, maybe. Teams were chosen "schoolyard style". This means team captains are chosen and with the bouyant relief that comes from choosing rather than being chosen they pick teammates out of the huddled and fear-grinning crowd.
The person before me bowls with competency if not brilliance and now it is my turn. Suddenly I recall why I wasn't in the A team for volleyball, why I didn't play field hockey with my friends, why I chose not to play any team sports. I detest 'letting my team down' with my shocking inabilities. Also, now I am standing in front of about 10 people, all watching my butt, my ass, my hiney. Last time I looked at it myself it was the proverbial traitor with it's ever growing presence. Luckily I look good in these jeans. Which are falling down because I forgot to put on a belt. Should I hitch them up? That requires a completely undignified hip wiggle, and I only have one hand, the other being occupied with a bowling ball in speckled green. But if I don't do the hip wiggle I may end up face down in the lane following my ball into the gutter with my nose. Aargh. Hip wiggle with one hand, switch ball, hip wiggle with other hand, readjust t-shirt for least butt crack protruberance, deep breath, run, brake, swing arm and release. WHY would anyone do this more than once?
Unfortunately, in the interest of 'not letting my team down' I did do it more than once, I may even have done it 14 times. Somewhere in the middle, around #8 or 9 I managed to hit the white things in the middle. Which I was told, with much laughter, was what I should be aiming at. ha ha. There-in is the shining light in bowling of any kind. When you run, brake, swing and release and you have the sweet feeling of successfully coordinating all that perfectly and the ball rolls down the middle of the lane, at just the right speed and with just the right curve, and smacks into the white things and they all go falling down even sometimes, gleefully, knocking each other down. That will make you do it another 7 or 8 times. Just the Hope of that satisfaction is enough to keep you playing, and even to consider returning to the game.
Finally, after 3 hours and two games, I was allowed to remove the offensive shoes and was released, blinking into the sunlight by my team.
PS. As said by House, (brilliant Hugh Laurie) There may be no 'I' in team, but if you mix up the letters, there is 'ME'
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Why Namlish?
There is a well known joke amongst Namibians that we don't speak the Queen's English. (Does Anyone?) So what we speak is a Namibian English, ie: Namlish. It occurs to me that what we need is some Amerilish too, know what I mean, y'all?
Friday, April 07, 2006
creative music
Coldplay is distracting, I sing-a-long to Satch - Henry Ate works pretty well for me. Jazz piano makes my foot twitch. The best is the 'Out of Africa Soundtrack' Or try 'The English Patient'
Beginagain
Mostly this blog is for me and my Mom, she has frequently said that I should write all my experiences down.. my travels, the people, the situations. I think I have reached a point where a paper journal, scribbled in before I fall asleep at night no longer suits. And anyway - paper journals are just one more thing to pack or recycle, the first is pointless, the second, heart wrenching.
PS. Diane and Debra Skinner - thanks.
PS. Diane and Debra Skinner - thanks.
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