South Africa: Sight

The dust is beginning to settle. What was once a fantastically unfamiliar place is becoming familiar. I know this street, that shop. I recognize that building. And I know how to get there from here. Twice now I've corrected taxi drivers who seemed determined to take the longest route. Both times, the driver laughed nervously and said, “Oh yes, yes, you're right. I'm sorry.”

I feel much more able and capable. Resistant fears and anxieties are giving way to curiosity and adventure. I am not entirely comfortable, but I am no longer lost. I'm beginning to find my way.

I am learning that there is something to be gained in relinquishing need or want control and giving in to abandon. Indeed, there are things that can only be known by letting go and letting the land have her way with you. The fixed becomes flexible and movable – notions, beliefs, inhibitions, etc, and the world begins revealing itself in a different way. I can notice and appreciate, wonder and investigate in earnest now. It is a pleasant free fall, not unlike falling in love. My mouth is dry and my hands are shaking but that's OK. That is normal. That is the way this goes.

I've moved my focus to what's happening around me rather than in me and am finding my energy better spent this way. Perhaps spurred by this newness, I decided to walk to my internship at Bush Radio instead of taking a mini-bus taxi.

On foot, the city feels more tangible, deliberate, intentional. The concrete has a certain smell, the buildings a particular look. I lay my fingertips against the bricks and steel and concrete feeling for a pulse. The sights and sounds compete for my attention and I've time to pay attention to them all.

School children in identical uniforms congregate at bus stops, some wide-eyed and chatting, some sleepy and uninterested. A young school girl in a group of three walks toward me, talking with her friends. Her voice shoots out of her mouth, a giggling trumpet, her hands flapping like agitated birds. I've seen her before but am just noticing her now. She and her friends walk past me as if I'm not there, as if I'm invisible.

It occurs to me moments later that that was the first time I had gone unnoticed since I'd arrived. Aware of this, I cast a glance about me and notice how very unnoticed I am. Buses and taxis compete with other commuters and mini-bus taxis, the latter hooting and zip-speeding through traffic. This is no longer surprising. I am no longer surprising.

We are becoming familiar to one another, Cape Town and I.