Rain

As I stood by the door watching the heavens open up, tears welled up in my eyes. Its raining. A big late afternoon highveld thunderstorm like we used to.

Something we haven't had a while.

We have water restrictions. Prayer chains for rain. How-to-save-water articles and tips up everywhere.

I stood outside, almost feeling special. Its my birthday and we got rain.

Perhaps its God way to say: I see your dreams.  

Dreams

Can I not be in vain?

Please.

Can my dream mean something?

Can I be enough?

Am I enough? Am I good enough to reach my dream? Will my dream to produce news or be happily married actually happen or will I just die at 85 with this want still deeply engraved on my heart?

Love

We all want to be loved. None of us want the shit or responsibility that comes with loving.

I said I love you on Tuesday night. To my best friend.

I realised that its so easy to tell someone you loved them. It doesn't take anything away from you. It does, in the wrong circumstances, create an expectation or create a vision.

But if you are loved, unconditionally, by a spouse, a lover, a friend, family or your dog - I think you're lucky. I think you're fortunate.

I know love don't pay rent and it doesn't make everything right. And no, love isn't always enough.

Love, in my mind, doesn't mean their perfect. It means you know them enough to know their flaws, their anger and their insecurities and still care enough about them to see them happy.

Humans tend to be idiots sometimes. Love anyways.  

The day It happened

It came.

Later than I thought it would. This time it took eight months. The part where I don't give a crap what we put on screen. Because really.

The previous time it took three weeks.

Is all this fighting worth it? The walking on egg shells everyday. The nasty comments. The disrespect that I'm treated with. The sighs and the rolled eyes. The talking behind everyones back.

This is TV. Not brain surgery. No-one is going to die. The worst that can happen is that we put black on air. That's bad. But it won't happen here.

We are trying to tell a story. A story we each interpret in our own way. An entertaining story. Soapies are made as entertainment, to create an escape for viewers everyday life. It shouldn't be this hard.

Bury the hatched. Forget your own stubbornness. Because really.

I think about it. I ask for costing. I do what I can to minimise the risk. Maximize the output. Maximize storytelling and creativity. All that, while fitting it into a budget the size of an espresso cup.

By the time I walk into your office, I've persuaded. I've made my case. I asked. I negotiated.

The hard face and the discouragement gets it to me every time.

I shouldn't be this difficult. Should it?

Dinner

I got a call on Thursday morning. They didn't get a close-up shot of the burned breakfast the day before. Can you please burn the breakfast again, we'll shoot the pickup on Saturday.

I didn't flinch. I've been asked stranger things. Working in television, this was a very normal request.

Saturday came. We burned the breakfast. We joked around, because nobody really wanted to be at work on a Saturday. Christian got his finger stuck in a door. Jared laughed and offered him a band-aid.

While packing up Christian asked whether he can put the burned breakfast in plastic bags for me to give away.

I stopped at the traffic light. The guy came. Like he did last night. And the night before. I smiled, gave him the breakfast and a banana. He didn't say anything. He ran across the street, waived his buddy closer and sat down on the sidewalk to eat.

I hung my head in shame. I get irritated when I don't have blue milkshakes or peanut butter in my house.

I'm complaining that I picked up weight and the guy on the corner's dinner depends on us burning a meal at work.

Ill

A family member of mine got ill just before I wrote my final exam. Terminally ill. The kind of ill where they do the chemo and the radiation but really just to prolong what they know: that it wont work.

Brain cancer. Apparently brain cancer develops over 10-15 years and dramatically alters the individuals behaviour.

It means that for most of my lifetime he was ill. Violently ill. Horribly ill. Trying to make sense of a world he didn't understand because he didn't know he was ill.

Paging through his Bible tears started running down my cheeks. If he was healthy, would he have been different? Would I forgive him all the bad if I knew that he was ill for all those years?

He was a devoted Christian. Loyal to the faith. Sang in the choir every Wednesday night. Attended Bible school. Attended all the Christian holiday services, even the midnight service before the new year starts... But sometimes he was so horrible. It made the Bible, the choir and the Christianity fade into the background.

Would he have been different if he wasn't ill? Would he have been happier if he could remember his words?

The tears keep coming as my heart breaks again. 7 years later. Because he isn't here and I will never again be able to hug him, tell him its ok. Tell him that I wish I could do something to make him hurt less. 

Mourning

I mourn my life: or the one I thought I would have.

I mourn the guy I had in India, because I never got to say goodbye to him. I never got to sort out things with him, after he refused to answer any of my messages.

I mourn because I never got to be excited with him for the music festival, that he has now organised three years in a row.  I'm so incredibly proud of him, because I know how passionate he is about it.

I mourn the guy I though I would get married to. Because he is now building a life with his wife in an Eastern African capital.

I mourn my body, because I know I can be healthier but I cannot seem to get the energy together to get there.

I mourn my dad, because he was my dad and he is gone. And because I will never hear him laugh again.

I mourn India, my home for six months, because I was happy there and because I don't know if I'll ever get there again.

I mourn my life because my dream of producing news seem far fetched and my attempts to get there seem to be going nowhere.

I mourn my dreams, because I don't know if I'll ever get there.   

When I wanted to stay

I came back from the Park run with a song in my heart. I was happy. I woke up early to do the Park run with friends, had breakfast afterwards and returned home.

And for a brief moment I wanted to stay.

I wanted to stay in my home country. I wanted to be around for the park runs on Saturdays, the braais on Sundays and the thunderstorms in the summer months. I wanted to be around to see my friends children grow up. To explore all the new restaurants this city offer.

I wanted to be around.

Perhaps it was because for the first time in 4 months I had a weekend off. Oh, two day weekend... I have missed you. I had time to do my washing. To lay in bed reading. To make coffee and drink it while its hot.

I don't really ever get the want-to-stay-feeling. I normally get the where-am-I-going-next feeling. I like a simple life. One where my life belongings fit into a backpack. One where I only need a bed, a bathroom and a kitchen. An alternative life.

But for a brief moment, just one, I wanted to stay.  

The Race thing

It was the man who brought my mum into hospital

The security guard who was nice to me, even when he saw my red eyes

The guy at work who hugged me, not saying anything

The nurse who made me laugh, even though my tears were so close

The guy at the factory, ever smiling and friendly

The colleague who offered help

The friend who offered to drive 70km to support me

Grace

Ephesians 2:8 (ESV)
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God"

I remember very clearly walking into university that day. I remember how excited I was but mostly how small I felt.

I got into university with luck.

My marks were good enough and I got a partial cultural bursary but there weren’t funds for the rest.

My mum enrolled me saying “you have one chance.”

One chance to create a better life for myself.

One chance to not be dependent forever.

And one chance to enable myself to see and do things, my parents didn’t have access to.

I received my degree and Honours in 2008.

Standing in the penguin suite, feeling very proud, my mum asked me how I felt.

I replied there is so much more I want to learn.

Watching as the #FeesMustFall protest go wild, barely 2km from my work, tears came to my eyes.

My tertiary education didn’t happen because we could afford it.

It didn’t happen because I was the right skin colour. It happened because of grace.

Faith, on my mother’s behalf is what got me into university.

Grace got me through it.

I wish education was free.

But then again, I also wish people would be less ignorant of the world around them.

More than just an education, the four years at university was the beginning of a love affair with Jozi, it’s people and its ability to, like a hen, take in everyone and make a space for them.

Sometime at the end of last year, I sat in the audience as a man from Somalia spoke in broken English, and told us how he fled his war-torn country. He arrived in South Africa alone, wanting to study. Another spoke about how he was herding cattle in northern Limpopo when he heard that he got a bursary for university. In his excitement, he ran home, forgetting the cattle out in the field.

Grace comes in all shapes and sizes.

Mine came in the form of a mother who believed against all odds.

For the Somalian’ grace came in the form of the UNHCR who gave him a bursary and for the other guy, grace came in the form of Studietrust.  

Now

I’ve lived in my new apartment in my old life for almost a month now. 21 days to be exact. As I settled into my life I realized that I dreaded this. This version of me Im expected to be.

When I left for India I packed 4 pairs of shoes. Which, when you’re traveling, is a lot. It was my all time favourite, worn out All Stars, running shoes and two pairs of slops. I still have all four pairs of shoes. A pair of slops was brought after one pair was stolen on an overnight bus trip from Delhi to Dehradun. My friend hated the bumpy bus trip, but I was too excited to care. It was my first weekend trip away from Dehli.

I survived for 2 years without a stable home. With 4 pairs of shoes. Without a stable job. And it was ok. I was ok. I was happy.

Contrary to what it seemed, I had enough of everything. I had enough money to walk into a private medical clinic in India and Malawi and for a couple of Rands get amazing treatment. Clean, friendly, helpful staff. Oh, and medication included.

While unpacking I hanged my prayer flags in my kitchen/ dining room. It was the only thing on my wish list to buy in Nepal. I didn’t go into Nepal with a list. Accommodation yes, but no expectation, no reason – just curiosity. But it gave me the world: it gave me friendly school girls who offered random conversation, bus trips through hills of greenery, little towns with mud huts and cows walking down the street and hours spend on the lake in Pokhora, getting sunburned.

I’m not sure what I hoped I would find.

What life would entail this time around.

Im not sure if I thought that I would settle back into it.

But I made the choice.

I did the ‘right’ thing.

And now I don’t know why.