My Man Without a Country

Sep 6, 2010 | An Expat, South Africa, Stories

Hero Hubs was away from Mama Africa for close to twelve years before we settled down here in the Cape exactly a year ago today. While I’ve worked through occasional bouts of culture shock, it has been interesting to simultaneously observe many instances of re-entry shock for him. He has returned to the country he left, but a lot of things are not the same.

While my Mom was here visiting, we went up the coast and were near a place called Kei Mouth (that K-word rhymes with “eye”). HH’s family used to have a holiday home in Kei, and he has fond memories of family vacations there. Since we were close by, we decided to drive to Kei one afternoon to see what things were like after so many years.

The Collie family sold the holiday home close to twenty years ago and it has since fallen into disrepair. The Bear was asleep in the car, and while my Mom waited with him, I slipped out to be a witness to the experience I expected to unfold. Broken windows, cobwebs and weeds greeted us as we drew near.

It was almost as if I could see HH’s heart sink as he looked at the home.

We peered through the windows and he began to speak.

This was the living room…we used to play spades on the floor right there. And there’s a rock on the fireplace. We used to pick up rocks on the beach and carry them up here and sit them on the mantle above the fireplace. I bet that’s one of them.

My sister’s room was just down there… and look, the tiling is still the same in my parent’s bedroom. That tiling is from twenty years ago.

Dad used to sit his toolbox right there by the fireplace.

Mom had a beautiful garden here…and there was a fence just here separating the front and back yards.

My brother and I walked down that path right there to get to the beach. See?

There’s the old outdoor shower…

All this overgrowth wasn’t here…there was a beautiful view of the ocean from here before.

I looked and listened through tears.

With a few tears of his own, memories of a gentle and sweet season of life were pouring out of HH. I seldom have the opportunity to witness these things, having never visited his birthplace and only occasionally spending time in what he considers his hometown. It was special and meaningful and very painful at the same time.

We took our time to walk around the place. We climbed a ledge and peered into what was once a busy scullery which led into an inviting kitchen. I tried to imagine what things had been like but struggled to create pictures in my mind. We saw evidence that the house had been occasionally occupied by drifters and we read a notice that it was set to be demolished so that a number of apartments could be put up there, and on the adjacent property.

On our way back to the car, I gingerly stepped over low walls and tall weeds and asked HH if he would like to take a picture.

“These types of things are best kept as memories,” he said.

I agreed, but decided to take just one picture from the car window before we drove off. It seemed like this home represented a bit of what South Africa might feel like to a returning expat at the moment: things are not as they once were, but if you look hard enough, you can find hope for what’s ahead.

In those brief moments, my desire to understand, to think through and to write about my “man without a country” began.

It’s funny how sometimes the best way to hold on to something is by letting go. Trying to grasp at a past that isn’t there anymore is likely to taint the memories you’ll hold about it in the future. Finding the bravery to walk boldly into an unknown future instead of clinging to a long-gone past doesn’t seem like an easy task.

But as individuals, as communities, even as nations, I think that our paths to progress are paved by the ability to remember the past without romanticising it — to learn from what has happened without striving to re-live it.

As a famous warthog once said, “You gotta put your behind in the past.”

What does it mean to come back to the place you’re from and not feel like you belong anymore? Are you still South African if you return to your people and you don’t feel like one of them? As I continue to think things through, this story will continue on another day.

xCC

Life Lessons from Bounce Dryer Sheets

Sep 4, 2010 | An Expat, Stories, The Good Word

About five years ago I found myself on a Scottish summer’s day, inside a grocery store, and in tears over dryer sheets.

You heard me right. Dryer sheets.

I think I need to back up a bit. I had just moved to Edinburgh a few weeks before and getting started in a new country brought a plethora of challenges to my dinner plate, including: Getting denied bank accounts and walking home in the rain. Getting denied a mobile phone contract and walking home in the rain. Getting on the wrong bus, then seeing the bus change numbers in preparation to change routes, and worrying I might not find my way home…ever. Fortunately after a while I learned to carry an umbrella, and to stand on the correct side of the street so that the bus would be going in the direction I wanted to go. It sometimes felt like Señor challenge found me around every corner with a big ¡Hola! ¡I yam heer to trouble you!

Anywho, this was the first time I was doing laundry in Scotland. My clothes were at the laundromat down the street, happily swirling in an industrial-sized washing machine, and I’d scurried down the way to the grocery store because I’d forgotten dryer sheets.

There I stood, struggling to calculate and recalculate the exchange rate in my mind before finally deciding that dryer sheets were prohibitively expensive, and I was no longer going to be able to afford them. In a culmination of weeks of rainy moments and culture shock, expensive dryer sheets set me over the edge.

Could I make it? Could I actually live here?

I returned to the laundromat empty-handed and discouraged, wondering what clothes dryed without dryer sheets would feel like, how I was going to survive the static electricity onset, and whether I was going to survive the transition to a new country.

Days and weeks and months went by, and I eventually began to adapt. By the time I left four years later, I was hanging my clothes on a drying rack like most of the UK, and my duds hadn’t seen the inside of a tumble dryer since I don’t know when. Except when I was home in North Carolina for visits. If there is a body of evidence that a person can be bi-cultural, this might prove a significant contribution.

Just the other day Hero Hubs mentioned that some friends visiting from the US had brought some friends of ours here in South Africa Bounce dryer sheets. We had a dryer in the first place we rented here in SA, and after last month’s move we just bought our own from some friends who moved back to the UK. (Because we’re not allowed to hang our laundry outside in this complex, and we’ve got a new wee one on the way…meaning lots of laundry is on the way!)

The mention of dryer sheets brought back the clean smells of fresh-cotton-flowery meadows and warm images of cuddly-soft, friendly teddy bears from commercials back in the States. I smiled and realised I had hardly thought twice about dryer sheets even though I’d been back to using a dryer for the last year.

It also brought back the reminder that life is always changing. Things are never going to be the same. There are important things in life that we need to try to hold on to, but there are a lot more things we might do well to hold a little more loosely. We can focus on what we don’t have, or can’t afford, or we can be thankful for what we do have…like an industrial-sized washer-full of clothing just down the street.

As the dryer buzzes, in the end I think the lesson is that learning to relax and let go of things you’d rather “cling” to brings healthy growth and healthy change into your life. As you begin to embrace the changes life brings, you may find that a gentler, fresher, bouncier you is just around the corner.

The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Yes, I have a good inheritance.
{Psalm 16:6}

xCC

I Struggle with My Privileges.

Aug 14, 2010 | An Expat, The Good Word

Sometimes there is so much discontentment in me I find it disgusting. And I feel like what I let you see, anyone see who sees my life, is the exterior where I pretend to be content and thankful and happy. But beneath the surface, I am less than who I want to be in Jesus.

We just moved into a new place. Our previous place was developing damp and mold and the smell at night was starting to get nauseating. (Remember, I’m pregnant.) It never got any sunshine and it just stayed cold. But if I’m honest, it was six gabillion times nicer than the average dwelling where many South African lay their heads at night.

Now we’re in a nicer place, and though we’re paying significantly less than what it’s worth, and I feel privileged to have the extra space and a little grass for the Bear to play on, and I am overjoyed that the sun is streaming in and we’re no longer cold and damp, there is also a part of me that wishes we’d found a cheaper place to live, in fact a really cheap place to live, so that we could give more away. Safety and security are priorities in this country. They are costly priorities that only some people can enjoy.

I’m slowly rounding the corner on a year since I last bought myself an article of clothing, and this exercise has been a powerful one. But our move into a new and unfurnished place has brought out the discontentment struggle in me again. There are so many little things we “need” — things that will make life more convenient and easier. But if we have a roof over our heads and food in our tummies, we already have so much to be thankful for and so little to be discontent about.

{T-shirt says YOU CAN’T BREAK MY SPIRIT}

The thing about poverty is that as much as you might picture dirt, despair, and lack, poverty is a mirror into your own soul. It’s a window through which you might begin to recognise your privileges, and all you have to be thankful for, if you’re willing. And when you hear a person in poverty say they are well, and not afraid, because they have Jesus, and Jesus is enough, the reflection shows you your own inadequacy. Your little faith. Your inability to be content and at peace when life isn’t going your way because someone has cut you off in traffic or you’re waiting longer than you should at the doctor’s office.

You forget that having your own transportation is a luxury 90% of the world can’t afford.

You forget that health care is a luxury that billions of people will never experience.

So today, in an attempt at honesty, I’m trying to show you a different side of the missionary experience. There’s the joy of being a blessing to people in need, and the challenge of recognising that you are sometimes the really needy one. There is the joy of knowing you’re at least getting some things right. There is the challenge of hungering for a soul that says Jesus is Enough, and means it.

I struggle with my privileges every day.

But I think this hunger and thirst I’m feeling is exactly what Jesus had in mind.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.”
–Matthew 5:6

xCC

Whose I Am

Jun 3, 2010 | An Expat, Stories

When I was younger I sometimes felt like I was in the shadow of my older brother and sister. Russ is a smart and talented and likeable guy — I told you, he’s probably a superhero! And my sister, Dodi, is beautiful and the life of the party and it feels like everybody loves her. They were both excellent tennis players who did well in school, and as I followed them through the ranks of High School and university (and didn’t quite have those tennis skills, mayhaps) I sometimes felt like a small fry in a Big Mac shadow.

“Little Dodi” or “Little Dot” or “Little Darrow” were common nicknames that followed me into my twenties. I’ve just realised you might not even know Darrow is my maiden name! Whoa! I can remember being little and laughing at my grandmother saying “Ru-Duh-Caroline!” as she struggled to finally arrive at the name she was looking for to call me.

I suppose without realising it I kind of stepped out of the Big Mac shadow when I left North Carolina. No one in Scotland seemed aware of my awesome older siblings (until they came to visit and were the life of the party again!) and since I was in my early twenties in a new country, I feel like it was a season of figuring out who I am, outside the box of where I’ve come from and whose I am.

Today someone emailed Mark and me an encouragement after receiving one of our ministry newsletters. (We send ’em out via email every month, so let me know if you’d like to receive them.) She ended by saying

“I’m so happy and proud of ‘Baby Darrow’ (and I’m not talking about cute Asher-ha!)”

For some reason, those words almost brought me to tears. Actually they did. They really did. Being away from home often means wishing someone was around who knows who you are. And whose you are. You wish you had some folks around who’ve known you for more than six months — people who remember that beat up Escort wagon you drove for your first car, and the guy you dated in high school that you probably shouldn’t have. You long for people who’ve walked up your driveaway (it’s up a hill) and sat at your Mama’s kitchen table. Because those things are such an integral part of you that you can’t fully explain, you can’t give them the pictures. They can’t see the Pamlico River at sunset or smell the Bill’s Hot Dogs you skipped school for. I told you I probably shouldn’t have dated that boy! They don’t know the trails where you rode your bike to the swimming pool every day all summer long, and they can’t hear the side door slam or the peaceful sound of cars passing on Christmas Eve while luminaries light up the streets around your neighbourhood.

But today, thanks to the amazing power of a few words typed in passing and whisked across the internet, a simple message from an old family friend meant for a moment I got to be Baby Darrow again. And I suddenly realised that’s a shadow I wish could follow me everywhere I go.

xCC

P.S. As I was finding a few pictures for this post, the Bear woke up from his nap and came to see what I was up to. He spotted a picture of Dodi and said, “Doe!” It’s good to think he’ll learn my shadow someday, and perhaps leave one of his own. And btw, photo credit for that lovely first shot belongs to Lindsay Lee Hartsell.

when the Day comes

May 26, 2010 | An Expat, Baby Photos

The day finally came

when his bones were long enough

and the weather cool enough

for him to wear

a sweater my sister gave him.

And I might get teary-eyed trying to explain

why watching him walk around in it

makes home feel a little nearer

and at the same time far away.

I think of days I long for

days my heart sings strong for

while wanting still to live here and now

thankful for today.

xCC