Late October 2022
"This is all I have left of a three bedroom house." I grin, as Harry helps me pack our stuff into his Uber XL.
I will say this to each Uber driver I convince to take the ride.
Harry is the second driver to hear more about the journey, and the events that lead to this moment together, since we left Noordhoek some weeks ago.
His eyes widen as I cheerfully explain what's going on, in between figuring out what should be packed next to fit everything into his vehicle. Sometimes we have to stop and discuss this, removing an item or two and repacking them, to save and create more space for the rest.
"We're traveling around, every couple of weeks, to explore a bit of a home province that we've somehow hardly even seen...
to find our next home."
The words are not always the same but the gist of my share is and it always sparks immediate interest. There's also always a reciprocal share about the passing of time, the weight of responsibility, unexpected life detours and largely forgotten dreams.
I'm on my way to an urban farm for the next couple of weeks.
I've chosen this visit because I know Nathan will love the animals.
We're also moving towards the end of year holidays and I want us to have a fun break together. We haven't had a holiday, or even been away for a weekend now, since April 2019.
It's been full tilt not-even-an-actual-weekend of the roller-coaster f*ck up that I still can't even remember parts of clearly. And the fall-out because of it, the trying to survive because of it and the rebuilding because of it. I am tired.
Some days even the coffee doesn't work anymore and it's time to rest.
It's also slowly sinking in that I'm finally out of the city I've been trying to leave for years. My dream of finding a safe, simple, peaceful place to call home is unfolding. I'm very aware that I'm "in it", and doing it, even if it isn't exactly what or how I imagined it would be.
As we travel around it strikes me, over and over again, that we often always get what we've been asking for somehow but often completely miss it...
because it rarely appears in the way we thought it would.
Or with the understanding of what we may have to compromise to get it.
There were times I honestly didn't think I'd ever get away. But, right here and now, the loss I had to incur to get to this point is slowly beginning to seem a worthwhile exchange.
There are also horses at the farm.
I know there's more necessary healing there...
for both of us.
When I give him the address and tell him where we're headed, Harry shares his childhood and school years with me.
His face softens and he smiles as he does this.
This always happens when I share openly about my journey. It's quite incredible how, as I share with an honesty that borders on bluntness, people immediately feel safe to do the same. It's something I always adored about meeting travelers back in the nineties.
Apparently some things don't change with time after all.
There's an urgency, immediacy and a different level of intimacy when people are aware their time together is limited. Even though it always is, really
Perhaps people feel less vulnerable to be themselves when the strangers they share themselves with will be strangers forever again in the foreseeable future.
Perhaps it's also because you meet like minded people when you're traveling in strange lands with only a backpack. There are no social connections, hierarchies, bling or any of the other sh!t we humans use to separate ourselves from each other when you're traveling light. Just a sense of a kind of soul family or kindred "spirited-ness".
This doesn't make it real, by the way.
It'd be naive to assume everyone you meet is the same as you are, simply because they're doing the same kinda thing. Or are in the same situation. You can't take things at face value when you travel. Especially when you're doing it alone. You gotta learn some street smarts.
Or you can get yourself into some pretty awkward situations.
One of my best friends got involved with a fellow traveler while she was backpacking through Israel, you know.
I'm talking way back in the dial-up nineties when it was still considered cool to backpack and roughing it was a rite of passage. In fact, only the privileged few could afford to rough it like that.
I'm talking way back in the dial-up nineties when becoming a YouTuber, who could afford their own Learjet at the age of fifteen, wasn't even imaginable. Back-in-the-day before almost everybody expected to live a rock-star lifestyle without having to put in the grind.
Or even learn to play a f*ckin' instrument.
But, truth be told, you met these types of travelers back in the nineties as well.
Kirsty woke up one morning and her imagined to be girlfriend was nowhere to be seen.
Neither were a great many of her clothes and all of her travelers checks.
And her passport.
Kirsty had to camp on a beach, on a diving safari trail in the Sinai, get a job at a local beach-bar and save up for a plane ticket to get herself back to the UK on utterly sh!t pay because she legally wasn't supposed to be working anyway.
Apparently the sex wasn't even that great.
Although, quite frankly, I'd have traded that experience for some travelers checks and a safely reserved airplane seat. For sure. Not the sex, mind you. The camping on a beach in the Sinai for three months.
But I've been called extreme.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...”
― Henry David Thoreau
You don't get to choose which experiences you want to have if you're into "seeking".
If you did you'd probably never find anything new anyway.
It's all good when you're into authentic experience. In fact, the most challenging parts usually make for the best learning.
And they absolutely always make for the best stories.
When I mention our destination is an urban farm, and share my distaste for city life, Harry speaks of how he too loves the country and how he much misses it.
He laughs while he shares how he rigged things so he could return, from the better education at the city school his parents sent him to, to the simple farm school nearby his grandma's place.
In the relatively short time it takes to get to the urban farm, Harry and I learn more about each other than most people do working or socializing under "normal" circumstances together for six months to a year. Or more.
Harry points out the gated community where he lives as we drive by. Our conversation drifts towards the cost of housing and rentals in the Western Cape.
The urban farm we're headed to is in a "non-white" area (how does one even say this in the "politically correct" way or even without flinching?), next to another area mostly inhabited by "people of colour". Nope. That's no better, is it? that's renowned in the Western Cape as a hot spot for Gangs and the resultant wars that unfold randomly and regularly.
You really don't want to know too much more about this.
Suffice to say it's hardcore, one of the reasons I stopped listening to mainstream news some years ago and that most of my "ever-so-white" social circle wouldn't be seen dead anywhere near here unless their dealer's car broke down.
There is, however, a rural area in the thick of this and I (as a good "ever-so-white" person) have never heard of it either. Despite the fact that we're now on our way closer back to the city and it's less than thirty minutes from where I've lived for most of my life.
Like the rest of the people who live around here, who will probably never be able to get out Let's face it, it's the only place I can afford right now as well.
This doesn't bother me much anymore.
I already stepped over the proverbial tracks a few years back.
In total antithesis to what one might expect, from the mild or blatant distaste expressed by those more fortunate, I've only found more honesty, more community, more generosity of spirit and far more authentic authenticity walking these particular streets.
For me, personally, this is officially the right side of the tracks.
We will not, however, be able to walk around this area at all.
Even walking to the supermarket within a 2km radius is not advised by the owner of the flatlet we will be staying in for the next couple of weeks.
I can manage this for two weeks, despite my immediate deflation that we'll be in a lock-down of sorts again for the next while.
As it turns out, some people live their whole lives like this in one way or another. Again, as we travel and experience a bit more of our country while walking in the majority of its population's shoes...
it becomes ever more clear, to Nathan and I, that perspective is pretty much everything.
I don't think any amount of money can buy this kind of education or experience. And I don't think you can learn this stuff at school.
Probably the exact opposite, in fact.
Before I've been informed of this, however, Harry and I drive up and down dirt roads trying to figure out where we are with no decent signs or numbers in sight.
After some easy camaraderie as we take turns to get ourselves lost, we find the correct gate. We turn off the dusty track into a beautiful driveway, shaded by enormous trees. It's completely unexpected after the trip through the dry, barren, "flat" landscape around this small oasis.
The house is simple and rustic. In all honesty, it really could do with some work but that's not what matters to me.
As soon as I step out of the car my nervous system begins to relax again, despite the supposedly "dangerous" area we're in. I feel as though I can breathe again as well. My smile softens from nervous taught into genuine. Immediately. I know I'm safe here.
External appearances can be very deceiving, you know. As can a mind that's been taught to be "good" or polite.
These days I only really listen to how I feel.
A nervous system always tells the truth.
Although we won't be able to walk around the area to learn more about it, this stay will afford us some really great knowledge nonetheless.
And it'll be imparted through our experience of this place. Again.
Nathan will learn horses and how to feed them. He'll also help out with feeding the chickens and ducks. which can be a complicated matter as it turns out
We will both be shown how to find, and collect, eggs from the hen house. And which ones can be offered to the gentle cross pit-bull, Maya, who is so well trained that she joins us on the egg hunt with no chickens being harmed in the filming of that scene. To follow...
The chickens will, in turn, learn about Global Warming from Nathan. He'll also share his thoughts on Trump, fences as the chickens listen carefully through theirs and more, when they gather at the gate expectantly. Regardless of whether it's feeding time or not.
I don't prompt Nathan's sharing or spontaneous story-time.
I do, however, quietly sit and listen to his thoughts.
Smiling.
Along with learning more about the animals, I'll be offered an experience that cements some learning (and skill) I've been working on for some years now...
why (and how) to not to react.
There are many "good fights" to fight. You gotta choose your battles carefully or you can spend your whole life fighting. You also gotta know if it really is a "good fight" before you do choose one. Or whether it's even a necessary fight. And, if it is...
you gotta know how and when to fight. *spoiler... mostly you don't need to react at all
- Me
I will also suddenly realise (in full) that I've been remiss in my parenting of this incredible human who is my son.
I've gone to such lengths to protect him from the less shiny bits of this world, despite the sh!t he's had to walk through that never should've happened to him at all, that I haven't skilled him up on how to survive it well enough.
During our stay here Nathan will discover a video game called Road 96.
As he watches the trailer, he'll pipe, "Hey mom... that's us! That's our adventure."
I'll stop what I'm doing to see the ad and will also, immediately, want to play this game. Not only because it'll give Nathan and I an opening to talk about some tough but necessary topics in a very cool way...
but because it is our story.
At this special place, I'll also begin to dance again.
While watching me do this, Nathan will make me a playlist on Spotify and share some of the music he listens to for the first time I've been dead curious but haven't wanted to pry when he refused to share it, so I'm not gonna share it with you either because respect... but it's pretty darned cool!
I will dance the whole playlist, to show my appreciation for his effort, during a two hour loadshedding black-out. And Nathan will laugh at me most of the way through. Which is kinda the point. Don't forget to play!
This will cement this practice for me in full.
And this will result in another massive leap forward in recovery for me, from these last years of...
um...
I guess you'd call it, Life. 👍
❤️
Hardened Dreamer
Mother
Warrior
Determined Dancer
and Stargazer
still...
Beyond fear is freedom
And there is nothing to be afraid of.
To Life, with Love... and always for Truth!
Nicky Dee
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