South Africa

Ara iso ni
Tada hito-me mishi
Shiroki tori
Hatsu koi no kimi
Waga yume wa kore

Once, far over the waves,
I caught a glimpse
Of a white bird
And fell in love
With a dream
Which obsesses me.

~Yosano Akiko

I first visited South Africa in 2006 due to my assigned law internship in Durban for two months. Then I returned several times thereafter. These were my initial thoughts.

There is a magnetic pull from the nucleus of this Earth which pulses throughout this continent, and if you are really blessed (regardless of your skin color), you can feel that pull as the universe pumps you with hope and life despite all the mistakes of the human race—and you want more of it, because it feels like you are home.  But the heart has vessels and nerves that reach the rest of the parts of the body—and hence if you are lucky you can hear the Earth’s vibrations (quite literally) in Wasco (California), Abbottabad and Lahore (Pakistan), Sullayal (Saudia Arabia) and even Marrakesh (the closer you get to the Saharan desert in Morocco)…but South Africa is part of the jugular. All parts of the heart are equally important I suppose…but is the heart anything without the jugular? I guess some of you are thinking of arguments in your head—that what about the brain? Well, of course if you have the heart and no brain—some would question if you really are even alive. But—without the heart there is no brain…so I mean my analogy quite literally—this continent is the heart.

It also has a way of healing, South Africa specially. A way of nurturing to matters you thought you had long forgotten, choices you have never considered, and decisions you feel too much.  It embraces you and strengthens you till you glow with the same concentration of affection that the Indian Ocean holds, and perhaps that is why this Indian Blue is the loveliest by far—it washes away so forgivingly. South Africans (99% of them) are all about forgiving…forgiving…forgiving…because there is nothing without forgiveness—including forgiveness for your self and for others.  This one South African attorney, my friend, (L. J. V. Rensburg ) said it best when she returned to South Africa after her visit abroad, “If you are lucky enough to feel it, there is a spiritual energy that you feel once you get here (if not throughout the time you are here) and definitely when you return back, having left.”  So, do those who have never left here—do they know all this? Strangely enough, yes. Just like the Blue Indian Ocean knows—although never as charming as the Caribbean—it is mesmerizing just because it is.

I am leaving soon. I am not sad because I am coming back.  This was just the beginning I had been waiting for my whole life.

If somehow the above description does not quite express enough, the following quote by Holly Payne, author of The Virgin’s Knot, relates well to my experiences in South Africa:

Sometimes there are places in the world we have never been but the minute we step into them we are forever changed.  We have native towns, houses where we grew up and return to now and then, but somehow, something overtakes us when we set foot in our homeland. Some call it the karmic debt land and we know it better than the places with which we are most familiar. A crooked tree, a bend in the road, the way a mountain whispers.  We need no road signs here because we already know the way, and everything at once becomes home. I have felt such things in Turkey.

 

Related posts:

South Africa and HIV Lahore Some photos from Santa Fe(e)