Change In Plans

Greetings from Cape Town.

Sadly, we are leaving today.  Zola keeps asking, “Why are we going?  Why don’t we just buy this house and stay right here?”  Good questions, complicated answers.

We have a 12:50 pm flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and then a 6 pm flight from Johannesburg to Sydney. 

I wonder how many emigrating South Africans have taken this same flight, one way, in the last 33 years.  It seems that the first big wave of white South African emigration took place after the Soweto uprising in June 1976.  There were some other big waves: after P.W. Botha’s Rubicon speech in 1985, after successive States of Emergency in the late 1980s, just before and after the first democratic elections in 1994. 

In the last 15 years, emigration seems to have stabilized, but everyone talks about it as an option “if things get bad.”  Having “internationally recognized qualifications,” as an accountant, actuary or doctor still has cachet, and having a foreign passport is even better.  I wonder how many emigres have later changed their minds and taken the flight back to South Africa.

The flight to Sydney is about 13 hours, and we move ahead 9 time zones.  We may have a few sluggish mornings later in the week.  India and I have been reading travel books about Australia, and getting excited to see and experience a completely new place.  We will shift back into a mode of continuous motion and activity, like proper travelers instead of the beach bums we have become.

The kids and I are getting in the car now to go pick up India, who left for her last long one-way run.  I think she has run at least 15 kilometers every day that we have been in Cape Town except Christmas.  Amazing. 

 We will have breakfast by the beach in Camps Bay, come back to hand over the keys and say goodbye to the house, and start the long trip to Sydney.

Our time in South Africa and Namibia has been special.  We are sad to be leaving.