We are expatriates in South Africa. Two years have passed since we moved here: friends were made, friends left and new friends walk in to fill in the gaps. It is like a never-ending process in a constant state of a neurotic flux.
There is never any dearth in meeting new people in expatdom – it either draws out on basic chemistry (whom you gel with) or ‘you speak my language and you are quite nice’. But never expect to meet the local population. They don’t live in our planet and we don’t in their scheme-of-things. Though the two planets have similar air and earth elements, their atmospheric pressures differ. They cross cosmic paths occasionally but in a formal and temporary way. If one is invited into the local planet – it is big deal - begging a big applaud.
There is an unspoken norm into which expats and their wives have to wriggle into. I must admit and rather sheepishly, and with an unmistakable nagging fear, that we eventually fall into a trap of ‘leisure-tude’. It lures us as much as the exotic and charming Namibian dessert does - but a dessert it is, with all its fascination and trappings. My fear is not for them but rather for me – the fear of time, which in a fleeting pretence is stealing the hours away from me and I would fail to find myself in all those intentions and in all those forms I’ve hoped and longed for.
you write well and your feelings are deep, genuine and vulnerable..but think about this way to gather some comfort: none of us are designing our lives, so if its someone else, just go with the flow and the rest will be que sera sera..
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