Home again, home again

I’ve been away ten years. First mesmerised by the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus, latterly maudlin from the dark skies of the Scottish winter. As I packed up my little office overlooking the Glasgow alley where the city’s junkies huddle out of the incessant rain and bone-chilling winds, I felt like my prison sentence was up. I could finally, finally go home.

What kept me away so long? Well, when you grow up in Benoni (along with Charlize Theron) where the only mountain you can aspire to climb is a mine dump and the only wild animals are the ankle nipping beasts of the Bunny Park, you end up a little thirsty for experience. For too many years the world was something that happened to other people on television. I desperately wanted it to happen to me. And it did. I rode horses across Iceland and danced flamenco with a gypsy boy in the south of Spain. I fell in love with 006½ and got married under a tree in a fine mist. And then one day, I got this gurning in my gut, this ache for something I’d never hankered after before. I wanted to go home. But more than that, I wanted to know home.

There’s a Scottish folk song that I love to belt out when I’m alone in the car. It goes like this:
I don’t know if you can see the changes that have come over me,
In these last few days, I’ve been afraid, that I might drift away.
So I’ve been telling old stories and singing songs,
That made me think about where I came from
And that’s the reason, why I feel so far away, today.
And let me tell you that I love you, that I think about you all the time, Caledonia’s (insert relevant country/person/food) been calling me, now I’m going home.
And if I should become a stranger, you know that it would make me more than sad
Caledonia’s been everything, I’ve ever had
Caledonia’s been everything, I’ve ever had.
(Cue bagpipes)

Sometimes I feel like I’ve always been a stranger to South Africa. A wee white girl who grew up in a neat house in a neat row in a neat white suburb, miles and lives away from the rural homelands and heartlands.
The only time I ever got close to this world was driving the N2 through what was then the Transkei and Ciskei, avoiding goats and dogs as we ploughed our way at 120km/hr towards Grahamstown and Rhodes University.
But I hope things are about to change.

A few months ago I was awarded a media fellowship from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa. They fund journalists to spend three months researching into a topic of their choice related to the modern South African democracy. What I wanted to find out was this: what’s life like now in the rural Eastern Cape and KwaZulu? So much of this democracy – its successes and its problems – seems to take place on an urban stage. How has democracy changed the lives of people in those rural places that I only ever saw through a car window?

I’ll be getting my boots muddy from January through March. My hope is that I can arrange to stay with families in rural villages and learn about life there first-hand. Right now it’s early December, I’ve just arrived in Cape Town and I’m soaking up the buzz, gazing at the Atlantic, meeting old friends and family, and looking for ways in to the story.

Rainbow’s End will be the first home for all the sights, sounds and feelings of home that are already dancing and drumming in my head.