Change In Plans

Greetings from Nashville!

Within a day, both kids both mentioned that everything in the U.S. is big: the cars, the roads, the plates of food, and the people. Big, big, big. Aside from that, they are purely happy to be in the warm embrace of grandparents and cousins and familiarity. Six months in South Africa, and the heartland feels foreign, but they like it.

For India and me, being here stimulates a more complicated set of emotions. We are happy to be with India’s family, and happy to see our kids so happy. That’s straightforward. We both feel a little guilty for living so far away, and for not participating actively in our families’ lives. We haven’t made it up to see my Mom (who just had her hip replaced) and step-father, but I feel sad to not be be closer to them. And I feel sad that the kids aren’t closer to any of their extended family.

On a personal/professional front, being here makes me keenly aware of how much time has passed since we had a stable and forward-moving existence.

For two years we have had a vagabond existence: moving, experiencing, repositioning, growing. It’s been fun, but many months ago, I reached the limit on my capacity for uncertainty and change. I have wanted nothing more than to be stable, working full time, making progress toward longer-term objectives. Cleaning out boxes of work papers and financial records in my in-laws’ garage brought this need to work to an emotional boil. The rest of the world has long since moved on, and I need to climb back on to it. Soon enough, I hope.

For India, being here reminds her of who she grew up wanting to be. She wanted to explore the world, live in the outdoors, know interesting people. She is happy that she has shaped her adult life in line with those dreams, but even she is feeling a need to stabilize and get embedded in longer-term relationships and objectives.

This all reads a little more angsty than I actually feel. We are happy to be here, and we treasure our family and friends. The next few weeks, in New York and at my Mom’s, will be fun and will refresh a lot of important relationships in our lives.

There are opportunity costs in all choices: if we live there we can’t also be living here, if I stop working and spend time with my family, have to accept that I have lost momentum, stature, etc. Generally I am good at ignoring opportunity costs, but being here confronts us with them directly.

When we go back to South Africa in mid-July, though, I think we will be good and ready to really start living there.

Greetings from Cape Town!

Excitement for the 2010 Soccer World Cup has been building in South Africa for the last six years.  Outside each of the big airports there is a huge display that has been counting down the days since 2007.  When we would arrive for holidays in past years, the displays would read some impossibly large and irrelevant number: 837 days to go! or 514 days to go! 

When we moved back in December, the day count was just over a hundred.  The marketers did a great job of building the excitement countrywide: special celebrations 100 days out and 50 days out, celebrations for the official openings of the new stadiums, etc.  Continuous radio advertisements that all ended with a booming voice saying, “Can you feel it?  It is here!”  Starting several mnths ago, every Friday became “Football Friday,” and millions of people wore yellow South African team jerseys to work.  In the last month, suddenly the blare of the long plastic vuvuzela horns became ubiquitous: bwaaaah bwaaaah bwaaaaah bwaaaah bwaaaaaah bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The World Cup on its own is a huge spectacle: 64 games, 3 million tickets, billions of people watching on TV, etc.  For South Africa, it is an historic nation-building moment.  There are still naysayers who argue that the money spent on stadiums could have been spent on houses or just given to the poor.  Maybe easy for me to say (we have a house), but the galvanizing effect on the nation’s conscience has been worth the investment.  Collectively, South Africans seem to be looking at each other and saying, “Wow!  We are actually pulling this off!  We did it!”  Having a lot of new infrastructure - airports, roads, train lines - is good too.

More immediate than the theoretical socioeconomic benefits, the experience has been amazing.  I was in Johannesburg on Friday, the opening day, trying to get to the airport to fly to Cape Town.  Everyone else was trying to get to fan parks or to the game itself.  It seemed that every foot of roadway was crowded with cars flying South Africa flags, horns blaring, vuvuzelas blowing.  It was an excruciating two and a half hour drive drive. I missed my first flight in eighteen months, and came extremely close to wetting my pants, but the atmosphere in the streets was electric.  Even in the airport, dozens of people were blowing their vuvuzelas in noisy enthusiasm.

South Africa tied Mexico 1-1 in the opening match.  When South Africa scored the opening goal, the entire country erupted in cheers.  It’s like nothing I have experienced before.

On Friday night, we went to the opening game in Cape Town.  The weather was warm and beautiful, the new stadium was spectacular, and the whole experience was exciting and fun.  The kids’ school is about a five minute walk from the stadium, so parking at the school was awesomely convenient.  We put Tallulah on my shoulders, and just blended in with the huge, festive crowd.  The game itself was a little dull: France and Uruguay tied 0-0.  But the experience and the positive feeling (and the giddy, deserved self-congratulation of South Africans) was great.

Our second game, on Monday night, reminded everyone that it is winter in Cape Town.  We got soaked by a cold rain walking to the stadium.  When it started to hail, India found us shelter in the back of a bratwurst-seller’s kiosk on the fan walk.  A smiling German sausage man came back to his tiny grilling area and found four of us huddled together for warmth.  He was gracious, particularly when we ought some bratwursts and congratulated him in German for his country’s 4-0 win over Australia the day before.

When the rain let up, we raced to the stadium to get under cover before the next downpour.  It rained on and off during the game.  Our seats were just at the edge of being covered: if the wind blew offshore, we were dry.  If it blew toward the mountain: drenched.  India was good natured but unamused: she bundled herself up like an Arctic explorer and lurked in the fully covered part of the stands.  Zola and his friend, Dante, and I cheered our lungs out and pretended it wasn’t actually raining.  We were glad that Tallulah had declared, “If it isn’t South Africa or America playing, I don’t want to go.”

Despite the rain, everyone had fun.  South Africa is pulling off this great event.  It is wonderful to be here.