A Year
A year ago I got on a plane and journeyed to the land of rooibos tea and red dirt. It is without question my world is not the same since I have returned. I have been attempting for weeks to try and write a memoir-type post for the year anniversary of journeying to South Africa. Thankfully, Sleeping at Last released a song describing quite pristinely what I've been trying to verbalize. Here are memories and pictures aided by lyrics from Sleeping at Last's newest song, "Smell."
Is this the part when the brain scans show where memories reside?
Some ambiguous shape in me suddenly producing light
Triggered like a tripwire, every time I breathe it in
Isn't it strange that a Lilac tree is what unlocks where I've been?
The memories from South Africa are deep and rich, filled with sights and sounds and people who bled into the core of who I am. Who I have become is largely due to South Africa. When I first returned home things would trigger memories leaving me breathless with the sudden surprise of the unlocking of moments held in space and time. One of the first days home I walked out to the kitchen and looked up from the floor to the large glass windows, the warm light of morning, the empty chairs in the kitchen, and I froze because my body and soul expected to see a dining hall full of people. To see the sun hung above the trees and soccer fields in Pietermaritzburg.
Like a time machine rebuilds the past, our memories return
Like remembering the ashes before we burn
The memories would return suddenly. The memories I thought were lost, were simply hidden in caverns of the majestic brain, awaiting the right smell/sound/sight to awaken each one. Memories seemingly insignificant when created, then become significant with the realization it was a space and time unreachable.
It is the friction that lights the match
Desperate attempts that make it last
So hold my breath for as long as I can
Before long, the wind swells in
Starting a fight I could never win
But I will hold on as long as I can
I would grasp these waves of memories with a tight grip, not daring let it fade. I would linger a little longer at a window, I would eat peanut butter and honey, I would listen to the music of my time in South Africa. I held on as long as I could. Some of the memories I hold most closely are from my time serving at Ethembeni. The number of significant moments from the short span of a month are irreplaceable and weighty. The song the children at the family center sang every afternoon, involving clapping and stomping, the ringing of strong Zulu voices. The days in the little blue house called Ethembeni I would often stand against the wall watching, attempting to keep my eyes open more than blinking so as not to miss a thing.
It finishes against my will
The light goes out, my heart goes still
And just like that, I believe in ghosts.
The memories fade, against every effort to not lose all the little details, they fade. It is a haunting realization to consider how a fiercely altering time could all but be forgotten in a matter of years. What must I do to keep the light as bright as it was the first day it was flipped on?
Time and space are at my back
Performing disappearing acts
Now I can escape the smell of smoke
Time went quickly and slowly while in South Africa. Classes were a blur, nights were long at first due to jet lag, afternoons hung in the air for lazy hours of Rook, soccer, swimming, walking, and talking. In South Africa, we could not escape the smell of dewy mornings, or Rooibos tea, or Zulu bread, or animals on safari/field trips/the reserve. We couldn't escape the minuscule details making this world so different from our "home." Every moment was embraced with longing to make the most of it. Conversations over tea and meals and walks. A soccer game in a thunderstorm ending minutes before we were supposed to be dressed up for our final formal dinner. Bus rides of singing and games and windows open with swirly breeze blowing in.
Research says that the only way to keep memories intact
Is to lock 'em away and close the doors til countless years have past
I guess that explains why the strangest things can conjure up the past
And forgotten time will find its long way back
The strangest things bring up the past. The problem is I don't want to forget the past, I don't want to lock the memories away like the worker given talents who buries the gift out of fear of losing it all. I want to invest the memories and lessons learned. We stepped off the plane in Cape Town dazed and confused at the transition taking place. After serving for a month in townships infested by HIV/AIDS we were immediately bussed to a large shopping mall in Cape Town. As we entered this commercial environment, the changes impressed upon our hearts in Pietermaritzburg showed. I wandered aimlessly, wondering what was taking place in Mpophomeni, trying to justify spending R100 on a meal ($10). The recent past had seeped into my present, making the blinding marble floors and tall windows suffocating.
As thin as air, as light as snow
Some combination of the unknown
It doesn't matter, I just know I need more
Cause I feel like I've been sleeping through the better part of this
Laying dormant through an endless winter that doesn't even exist
South Africa felt like vibrant living. Before we departed South Africa, my cohort and I often talked about how to enter back into American life while avoiding negating the days. Life in South Africa was full of adventures and plans every day, making a Tuesday feel anything but stagnant. The challenge is how to live in the present, to live and not simply sleep through the mundane in life back "home" after time in South Africa. The mundane was beautiful beyond description because we woke up each day in Pietermaritzburg believing miracles could occur over the course of soccer games and mall runs
It's gravity in an hourglass
Responsible for the avalanche
And the loudest silence that I've ever heard
Memory clear as a bell
A story that I will try to tell
Maybe this time without words
Telling the story of South Africa is one of the most difficult things I have tried to do. Partly because I feel as though it is a precious jewel to keep hidden, to keep as my own. Partly because there are so many factors playing into each story it seems exhausting to verbalize it all. This post is a few weeks late, I intended to post it on the actual one year anniversary of flying to South Africa. But sometimes words are difficult and memories potent and missing a place doesn’t seem to fade with time. Maybe this time, the words of another (thanks Sleeping at Last) can aid in formulating the feelings I have tried to put arbitrary letters to. Maybe this time, the memories will be clear and stay for a while.
