Coming
Home to Die?
An Odyssey, from Ex-pat to Re-pat.
Liberating, humorous,
and challenging views of an ex-pat/re-pat South African-American who has come
home to die (although she hopes not too soon).
At the ripe old age of 19, curious about what was “out there,” I
departed the land of my birth and settled in California’s San Francisco Bay
Area. I’ve visited South Africa regularly since 1994 and, after four decades
away, I'm... incorporating ... an American life—organized bureaucracy,
comparatively ‘fair’ taxes, buses that run on time, and customer-focused
service— into a life that offers little, if any, of that.
What can I say? “Home” is a matter of the heart and the soul. Isn’t it?
Join me on this odyssey* of rediscovery, re-entry, surprise, amazement, and, yes, sometimes indignation at “the future.” Together, we explore the funny, the poignant, the infuriating, and the “just plain nuts” of mono-, bi- and multi-culturalism as well as the effects of our collective past on our collective future.
(* I use “odyssey” in memory of Mrs. Mary Lamb who taught a small group of Standard 3 and 4 students at Camperdown Gov’t School in what is now KwaZulu Natal. Mrs. Lamb, wife to school Headmaster Jack Aloysius Lamb, chose on many a hot summer afternoon to read Homer to her soporific students. Thank you, Mrs. Mary Lamb—and, well, Homer, too. You instilled in this student a lifelong love of seeing, reading, travelling, and writing.)
