A place i know

I can remember it like it was only yesterday; even though I’m in England now I still reminisce about the year I had. From the air I knew when I was over the country; I’d look down and see many mighty trees and the greenness of the land. I remember getting out of the plane on my own with the lady flight attendant, it was such a different experience from usual. I almost felt like I didn’t belong… Left, right I kept taking glances in the airport and all I saw were large numbers of people, who were the same ethnicity as I, but I still didn’t feel like I belonged. .. Left, right. ‘Emily hold the bag properly man’ these the first words I could clearly understand. I felt a little hope; maybe I would be able to communicate after all? In my head everyone spoke a different language to me. Ten minutes of waiting in arrivals and finally I see my Dad for the first time in seven months. He reaches over to give me a big hug, I see my brother who does the same.

Ok, when arriving to my auntie’s house (the one that I would be living in) I was really nervous and didn’t know what to expect. I walked along the corridor and it seemed to be quiet. My brother opened the sitting room door and I swear I could see half of my family from my mother’s side. I was really startled by this, to know that everyone was waiting for me and took the time out just to come and meet me gave me that sense of belonging which had died in me. I truly felt overwhelmed because I had never had this strong united family and now I was suddenly exposed to it.

I started school and it was a very different experience for me as I had to cover all of my books in wrapping paper. Over the next few weeks I saw many children going to school who had luggage bags as school bags, kids who couldn’t afford shoes and I remember some walking without any shoes on the hot and broken tarmac roads. This really stirred up emotional feelings in me. This wasn’t the worst of it because these kids had to drag themselves and their massive cases for miles.

I can honestly say my journey to Africa was a unique one because I was daily oscillating between a poorer neighbourhood and a private school in town and I got to see how different people think, act and behave in these varying environments. In the poorer neighbourhoods kids were more alive.

Taxis were a big art of my time in South Africa however they were very different to the ones I was used to in England which have a maximum of six seats. South African taxis have fourteen but that didn’t stop an extra six people coming in! When I was going to school I had to take three taxis and the worst thing about it was that my Mom only showed me the way to get to my school once. It’s hard to explain but if you wanted to take a taxi you would have to do different hand gestures to the Taxi driver with your hands up and they might stop for you if they were going were you wanted. I often got embarrassed because I would literally have to shout the destination at the driver but every time I did no one understood my pronunciation; people would either give me a surprised look and start talking about me, or the taxi driver would ask me to repeat myself and I’d end up being the talk of the taxi ride with people asking many questions about England. For getting to school I had to use two hand gestures, the first one would’ve been a closed fist with my pointing finger aimed directly at the ground with a few circulation movements which told the driver that you wanted to go somewhere local. The second hand gesture was a closed fist aimed at the sky which would tell the driver that I wanted to go to town in Springs where my school was. I also had to use various other hand Gestures for getting to different places; I felt like I was learning a whole new language.

After a couple of months at school my brother wanted to take me to Carnival City, a casino and arcade which we always went to when I was younger. To be honest it was just as eccentric and colourful and as full of energy as I had remembered. There were a lot of young people playing games and we also decided to go to the go- carting zone which was really fun because unlike in England people take the races very seriously. I could tell because of the looks which were being shared between myself, my brother and the boys who were in the line. There was one tall boy who kept looking at us, he couldn’t keep his eyes off us because we were his competition but he looked nervous too. The race had to be stopped because of too much chaos on the lanes. 

In South Africa there is a soap that is very popular, the soup is called generations and it is much like the EastEnders of South Africa, nearly every night at 8:00 pm we as a family would watch it, quite often when my other family would come around, for me it would be like watching to soaps because of the fact that everyone was so loud and lively that there is no way we could ever watch a soap in total silence. The liveliest character in my family has to be my aunt Charity, I say this because she is a very loud and funny and she also always wants the attention to be focused on her, my aunt is the type of person who would stand in front of the TV when the most dramatic scene of the soup that everyone has been waiting to see comes up. Overall I would say that my journey to South Africa really broadened my view of the world.