Dispatches from the sunburned wastelands

I got a phone call on Friday from a recent South African immigrant. She was feeling homesick, and desperate for someone to talk to, so she started paging through the phone book until her eye caught a South African-sounding surname (mine). So she called me. And I answered, and listened, and sympathised. We went through the same process, not once, but twice. And it is never easy to move to another country - everything is different, the smells, the sounds (those awful birds, she wailed), the food in the supermarkets, the medicines in the pharmacy...

Immigrants usually go through all those well-documented steps - the euphoria of a new and fascinating place to explore; the sudden realization that your not on holiday anymore, that this is real; then the doubt starts to set in (did we make the right decision?); you want to pack up and go ;home; you begin to romanticise all the good things you left behind (conveniently forgetting all the good reasons you came here in the first place); but slowly, you begin to accept your decision, and life goes on, until one day, you wake up and realize you understood the political joke the radio host just made.

We've been here for nearly two years now, and I still don't feel like I am "home". Maybe you never do...

Posted by HannesB at 8:35 PM Comments