This weekend we had a houseguest. My South African friend who has been living in London for a decade, and is marry his English sweetheart this Spring, came to stay.
Around the dinnertable last night, we compared notes on his vs my feelings of living abroad. Our late night chat reminded me of a lesson I keep learning. We all think we are so uninteresting until we examine our differences, and when we do, we are so rewarded with a richness of immensity and intensity.
The way my expat friend explains it, he sees living in England as an active choice to enjoy another part of the world, experience life afresh and make a wealth of new friends. He feels no less South African, although he admits he feels no longer connected with the idea of living there. “Yes, I do love and enjoy the beach and the land when I am there, but there are many beautiful parts of the world”. He has no urge to return. None at all. He even goes so far as to proclaim that he has no idea where he will find himself in the next decade, let alone the second half of his life.
He might as well be speaking sanskrit to me. I must confess that mostly I have seen leaving South Africa and living elsewhere, for the moment even, as a sacrifice, and a betrayal. I mourn my time spent away as a loss. Yet, I know that returning is not the answer for me at this time.
Perhaps our differences are best decsribed in a report published by Jonathan Crush on the gender differences in why and how we emigrate. According to his policy paper, women were more likely to express a desire to live outside South Africa temporarily, whereas more men expressed a desire to leave permanently. In addition, he asserts that as prospective emigrants, “women were more likely than men to make frequent return visits to South Africa, less likely to dispose of assets in South Africa, and less likely to wish to retire or be buried in a foreign country.” In short, women make reluctant emigrants. Could it be as simple, and as black and white as this?
If you asked me, I couldn’t wrap it up into any pretty bundle, and being a person who likes to define things, all this fuzziness is disconcerting for me. Like a little worn and salty mussel, I have grown into the African rocks of the Atlantic ocean, and being ripped away never stops hurting. Trust me, I have tried to tidy it up. I want to know my future. Could this be owed to Crush’s resasoning that women find is harder to leave South Africa? Perhaps it comes down to or reasons for uprroting ourselves. Apparently women arre more likely than men to identify “family” as a reason to stay in South Africa; men cite “patriotism”. Does this mean that the uncontrolled crime, political uncertaintly and myriad of other problems plaguing my mother earth, men are finding their patriotism being questioned?
I always believed we fell neatly into two groups. There were those who left home because they felt they must, and are a always quietly working towards a return. And there are the 1-x=y group, who left because they felt they must, but since, they have accepted that returning is no longer an option – a situation they grieve openly given a second Castle beer. But my friend has opted to sever his emotional longing. He has adjusted his home base status and inner directional magnetic draw. His very gray idea of being a citizen of the world both scares and relieves me.
Choosing to see my life as a choice, as he does is, in this unlabeled, male, way, is new to me. A freeing restraint. Blurry lines. It is something again I attempt to attach myself to, as a life raft in this sea of uncertainty. The act of which, I think further deepens our colourful differences.
