At home in Jo'burg

Right now as I write to you (posting will be much later) I am at the International Airport in Johannesburg, waiting for our connecting flight to Luanda, capital of Angola. What a pleasant surprise this was. As some of you may know, we lived right here, I mean not at the airport, but in Johannesburg, AKA as Jo’burg, almost 9 years ago and for different reasons, I only came back a few months after the family had left and never again. I was a bit apprehensive as I wondered what this moment would be like, becaue revivals can be quite awkward and I have a bucket full of stories from this place, starting with the arrival of my very dearest Carlota and Siggy. They are both from Jo’burg. In case you don’t know, Siggy was our delicious golden retriever, who came to us with the very specific mission of calming Carlota down. Obviously, he could be named nothing but, “Sigmund Freud”, thus “Siggy”. He very sadly died a few years ago from a liver disfunction.
Anyway, going back to being back in Jo’burg’s… I am loving it! “News Café” is here and so are “Cape Union Mart” and “CNA”. Yes, yes, absolutely yes, “Out of Africa” too and it has grown much bigger and their products are amazingly tempting… gee, why are we only allowed a certain amount of kilos in the plane… how I would like to take home a dinner set made by Limpopo Ceramics!! So out of Africa, roughness with style. I am loving being here! I think what most made me feel at home was the accent… wow, this accent is now just as familiar to my ears as it was in the past.
You know, in this gypsy style of life, arriving somewhere that is not your home and feeling so at home is a blessing. It makes life so much easier! This thing of comfortably slipping into the "feeling at home" mode in different places, reminded me of Alice, my older daughter, who went to Kenya this past December with her husband, David. I was on the phone with her, asking how things were going and she said ”well mom, in the first couple of days it was a bit different, it wasn’t feeling like I belonged here, so I decided to go to my old hairdresser here in Nairobi and after that, life was good!" I loved it!!