Redsaid

Even though it is already early evening, a gust of steamy air engulfs me as I step off the China Airlines plane at Taipei's Taoyuan Airport. Even after experiencing this same suffocating level of humidity at Hong Kong's Airport just hours before, it is still a shock to my system following the mild winter weather I've left behind in South Africa.

The airport terminal, although air conditioned, still offers little respite and I suddenly feel like a hot, sticky mess. However, I suspect that this may have as much to do with my uncontrollable nerves as it does with the heat. I can't believe that this is finally it; that we are here at last and that my adventure as a mature-in-age-yet-childlike-in-attitude-and-personality as a HomeStay participant is about to begin. I never in a million years thought that I would ever have the opportunity to experience what it is like to be a foreign exchange student of sorts, especially not as an old foagie in my mid-thirties!

Not having learned her lesson before, my editor kindly waits for me so that we can go through immigration together. For some reason, I never received the customs form to fill out on the flight over from Hong Kong (perhaps I didn't stick out like a sore thumb quite enough among all the Asian passengers?), so I have to complete it at the desk. Once again, Ms. Editor patiently waits for me while I deal with yet another immigration official. Luckily everything goes without a hitch this time and we walk into the arrival hall together.

A group of sign-wielding, beaming SayTaiwan volunteers are there to welcome us and to make us feel like total celebrities. Smiling and introducing themselves in broken English, they usher us towards a meet and greet area off to the side of the terminal. It is here that we at last meet Taiwanese Southern African and our overworked SayTaiwan coordinator, Alice. After having communicated by Facebook for the past two and a half months, it is wonderful to meet her in person at last. Accomplished and amazingly multilingual, she is so much younger than I had expected her to be, but every bit as beautiful and kind as I had imagined her.

Guided by more volunteers, we are given a goodie bag containing a Motorola cellphone loaded with 300 New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) in credit; a smart card to be loaded with money for use on Taiwan's public transit systems; and an ID badge. The latter is large and laminated and contains our full names in the front along with the fact that we're "International Guests" and the name, address and telephone number of our host families at the back in Chinese characters. I find this oddly comforting. We are instructed to wear it around our necks, and we obediently slip it over our heads. Ms. Editor runs over to get my number and promises to remain in touch, before she is off to meet her host family who has come to meet her at the airport.

After signing a release form to indicate that I've indeed received the Motorola, I quickly unzip my big suitcase to give Alice her present: the biggest box of Weetbix cereal sold in South African grocery stores. Shortly after befriending her on Facebook and learning that she is originally from my neighbouring country Namibia, I asked her if she had requests for any goodies from home that I could bring for her. "Weetbix!" was her first and almost immediate reply. She accepts it gratefully and tells me that she's not held a box of it in about three years.

"My" kind Taiwanese volunteer then leads me to the bus stop outside and kindly waits with me for the bus to arrive that would transport my luggage and I to the high speed rail station from where I will board train that would take me to Taichung City to begin my HomeStay adventure with the Hung family.

Blog Post Powered by a Sony Vaio Y courtesy of Sony South Africa.

The ceiling fan lazily twirls, playfully tugging at the tied-back net curtains framing the sliding glass doors. I'm sitting cross-legged on the legless chair, the netbook on the low coffee table/desk in front of me. This floor level chair is surprisingly comfortable - even for someone who is as stiff-limbed as I am. I'm actually amazed at how entirely at home I already feel, considering that there is at least six thousand miles between this beautiful, spacious guestroom I'm in and my own minuscule place in South Africa.

I marvel at how lucky I am to be here and think of the journey that has brought me to this amazing place. During the long trip here, the reality of where I was going only sank in after I found my seat on the South African Airways Airbus bound for Hong Kong. I was suddenly surrounded by passengers of Asian descent, many of whom spoke very little or no English at all. I quickly realised this when I located my seat only to find a young Chinese woman in it. She was cradling a tiny baby and I apologetically asked her to move. When she looked at me blankly, I flashed her what I hoped was a rueful smile and pointed at the seat number on my ticket. When realisation hit, she immediately and graciously moved over.

Not having to make small talk for once was actually welcome, because I was exhausted. I almost did not get to be on that plane, though! Due to a 30 minute flight delay in Cape Town, which had been the starting point of my trip a few hours before, there had been just a few minutes to spare to make it to the connecting flight in Johannesburg.

On that flight to Johannesburg, I actually had a bit of a surreal moment. The man a seat over from me was reading one of the Afrikaans daily newspapers, and suddenly, when he turned the page, I glanced over only to gasp with shock. Right there, on the page he had turned to, was a full-colour and way too big photograph of MY awful mug! (Luckily I'd had the foresight to camouflage my body behind my laptop when I had my mom take the picture earlier that week.) The article was about this very trip I was embarking on. Just before we landed, I summoned up the courage to ask him if I could please have that section of the paper. Without a flicker of recognition, he handed it over. So much for my newfound "fame"...

Fellow SayTaiwan delegates Dan, my editor and I had to make a mad dash through OR Tambo Airport to get from domestic arrivals to customs and security to reach our departing plane on time. My editor had kindly waited so that she could meet Dan and I at domestic arrivals, so we all sprinted (okay, so perhaps it was more like slowly limped, in my sad case) all the way to international departures.

I was so excited at seeing my editor again, and that - coupled with my usual scatter-brain and our haste - caused me to run straight through the security checkpoint at customs. I only realised that I didn't have my carry-on case with me when we were already half-way through the terminal. I was remarking on how cleverly light Dan and my editor were both travelling when it suddenly hit me that I was also carrying a much lighter load than I had been just moments before.

"My carry-on case!" With those breathless words, I turned on my heel and this time REALLY RAN back to customs, my heart in my throat and panic levels rising.

When I arrived back at the security checkpoint where I'd idiotically left my case, the officers immediately knew that I was THAT GIRL WHO RAN AWAY WITHOUT HER SUITCASE. This must've raised their suspicions, because they all regarded me with stark faces.

The offending case was - I was relieved to note - still in one piece on the pre-screening side of the checkpoint. "Why did you go without your suitcase?" the one female officer asked, accusingly pointing a white-gloved finger at me.

"Erm... I'm sorry!" I said, harried and anxious to grab it and go. "I'm very excited to be going overseas!"

"It's good that you're excited," she said. "You only live once." I almost laughed out loud at the situation, which was becoming increasingly bizarre. However, any intentions of smiling, let alone guffawing, vanished when the official refused to hand over my suitcase so that I could make a beeline for the flight.

"No," she said firmly when I tried to reach for it and gripped it even tighter. "You have a bottle in here."

"I do?" As soon as I'd said it, I realised that this was a mistake.

"You don't know that you have a bottle in here?"she asked incredulously.

"No... I mean, yes, of course I know," I stammered, my panic levels soaring once more as I see my editor anxiously waiting on the other side of the gate. "I meant to phrase it as a reply, not a question."

"Open your case, please," she sternly commanded.

I helplessly tapped my watch, and, realising that any further protestations would be futile, just surrendered at unzipped the case. She lifted everything out until she found the package that had so beautifully been wrapped by my sister.

"This one has the bottle inside," she said. I swallowed back the overwhelming urge to congratulate her on her psychic ability and just decided to resort to grovelling instead.

"Please?" I begged. "I'm going to stay with a foreign family and this is a gift for them to say thank you and to share our wonderful culture with them."

She clicked her tongue with what I mistook for sympathy and for a split second I was almost hopeful. But she was unmoved by my explanation. "You can check it in, otherwise we have to take it."

"But I'm going to miss my flight! I don't have TIME to go and check it in..." Arguing was just wasting even more time, so I simply ripped open the package and opened the box. "There, take this," I said, handing over the special edition bottle of Amarula. "But I'm keeping the glasses."

With that I was free to go. Needless to say, as soon as we reached the duty free shop, I promptly replaced the confiscated Amarula with an even larger bottle. Joining up with Dan later, I found out that he had been forced to sacrifice a bottle of wine to them. I'm still wondering whether customs and security officials at OR Tambo don't perhaps get a kickback on all the goods passengers buy at the airport's duty free shops to replace the items that had been confiscated by them.

We finally boarded the plane with just a few minutes to spare until take-off.

Blog Post Powered by a Sony Vaio Y courtesy of Sony South Africa. 

Just as I had feared, I ended up breaking every etiquette rule in the book.

I blame it on the crocodile complex. As soon as you’re told that you should under no circumstances utter the word crocodile or even think about a crocodile, that is the ONLY reptile that slithers to mind, isn’t it? (Do crocodiles even slither? I know they have legs, but those are such squat little things, and... okay then, never mind...)

In case you have NO IDEA what I’m on about (as usual), I’m talking about my now-not-so-recent-anymore trip to Taiwan. At last. What can I say? I have always been known for my breathtakingly snappy, tell-it-even-before-it-has-happened style of reporting and blogging.

Oh, and yes! Hello! It’s good to see you again too after all these months of unexplained, deafening silence, my three imaginary readers!

I have begun diarising the trip in minute details elsewhere (including how I committed several cardinal sins with chopsticks), but before I either disclose the link to that site (doubtful, since it contains an unfortunate shot of my mug), or shamelessly copy and paste some of what I’ve written there onto here (more likely, since I’m notoriously lazy), I just have to tell you a few things I’ve learned about travelling to Taiwan.

I know I've titled this blog post “101 things about Taiwan” - since it has such a downright poetic ring to it and also since it has the added bonus of subtly paying homage to the towering Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taipei - but that by no means implies that I’m now actually going to dream up one hundred and one things. Because that is a LOT of things. Even someone who sucks at Mathematics as badly as I do knows THAT much.

So here then, just this one thing, for now, but it is a rather profound truth:

When you travel to Taiwan, get used to frequently hearing the following question before your departure: “So, you’re going to Thailand?” And after your return, get used to those same friends and even strangers coming up to you and asking: “So, how was your trip to Thailand?” 

For some reason, many folks tend to get those two vastly different (despite the fact that both are Asian) T(h)ais mixed up.

But instead of getting all knotted up about it (geddit? GEDDIT?) I patiently respond: “Not the land where they make  Ladyboys. The land where they make La-Z-Boys!”

TOLD you it was profound.

P.S. As for whether La-Z-Boy recliners are really manufactured in Taiwan? Google kindly confirmed it as fact. Never mind that I had to ever-so-gently manipulate the search a few times before it gave me the desired result...

I’ve been so busy trying to master a bewildering array of skills – not the least of which includes the art of eating with chopsticks – in preparation of this upcoming journey, that I’ve not had the time or the fingers left to reach out to this keyboard and let you, my three loyal imaginary readers, know what is going on.

And I leave TOMORROW. EEEK!

Where did these past two and a half months go?! And why did I ever stupidly, naively think that it would be MORE than enough time to lose 15 kilos and finally realise my dreams of uncovering my cheekbones (long lost – since birth, actually); become fluent in Mandarin (HAHAHAHA! I can’t even say hello without putting the rising intonation on the wrong syllable and therefore changing what ought to be a safe pleasantry into a linguistic landmine of potential insult…); AND find the perfect wardrobe that would deceive everyone into believing that I DO have cheekbones. And hip bones. And collar bones.

On the upside: Thanks to inyourFacebook, I have already forged firm friendships with some of the other international delegates and cannot WAIT to finally meet them in person. AND I have gotten in touch with my host family! A process which makes me feel like an alien making contact with humans for the first time.

At first, I was informed that I had another host family in a different area. But then, just two weeks ago, before I had even said as much as a virtual hello to them, I was told that they withdrew. No reasons were given, but I suspect that they took one look at my awful photograph and the essays I had written, and were forever traumatised.

My new family is located in Taichung City, the third largest in Taiwan and, according to the Google oracle, about two hundred kilometres southwest of the capital Taipei. They consist of 21-year old Tanya and her younger sister Page, their mom and their dad. I’ve been in e-mail contact with the sisters, exchanging photos (yes, I figured to just get the harsh truth out of the way quickly) and they look and sound utterly adorable and so-so-sooo kind. They are ALREADY going out of their way to make me feel extremely welcome and I’ve already fallen for the lot of them. Their mom can’t speak English, so coupled with my lack of Mandarin, I’m bound to be a farcical picture of wild gesturing – which, really, is not too unlike my usual mode of communication. However, according to the research I’ve done, even such innocent charades could lead to plenty of unwitting insults and rudeness. Winking is considered vulgar and so is the way in which we use our finger to beckon someone towards us.

And speaking of hands and fingers, that reminds me: the training on the chopsticks… it is not going so well, I’m afraid. Then again, my crippling lack of dexterity even makes eating with the aid of pronged and bladed western utensils a right – forgive me – fork up most of the time, so it really isn't that surprising that my chopsticks-wielding chops aren't up to snuff. After all, I can't even play Chopsticks on the piano!

I could either starve, which is not too likely, since I have way too many fat reserves in my backside, front side and side sides to fall back on. If you think that this might just be the thing to make me lose all this excess weight I’ve been lugging around since birth (WhadoyouMEAN I can’t still call it baby fat at 36?!), my reserves will mean that even if I don’t manage to successfully transport a single grain of rice into my mouth for the next two weeks? I probably won’t even lose a gram…

(Blog post powered by this shiny new accessory I’ve been sporting…)

It all began about two months ago when I received an email from my gorgeous editor. "How would you like to go to Frightfully-Exotic-Destination-Far-Out-Of-The-Country?" (She actually called the place by its proper name, of course. This is just me, up to my usual amateurish writing tricks.)

My reply was probably half-incoherent as usual, but I DO recall that I said something along the lines of: "AREYOUKIDDINGME? Of COURSE I do! I want to go ANYWHERE!" (Yes, I always yell at her on email.)

Unfortunately my hysterical over-enthusiasm and willingness did not make it a done deal. Not by far. We had to actually enter a global competition first. This required us to complete a flurry of virtual application forms, answer almost 200 questions, write some essays, take pictures (UGH! WHY do people need to see what a writer looks like?!?), submitting all of it on time and crossing our fingers until they turned red then blue then black.

Being my usual 'optimistic' self, I decided not to get my hopes up at all. So I tried my best to forget about the contest (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Right, because I don't fixate. At all) and just carry on with my no-life life. Two weeks ago, Ms Gorgeous Editor and I both received emails informing us that we had made it through to the semi-finals. (I wasn't surprised about her success. I've been telling her all along to just pack her bags already.) One step closer to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I still didn't dare to think about it.

Thing is, as always when I forbid myself to do something, my lack of any self-discipline results in me hardly thinking about anything ELSE! I even went as far as joining the contest's Facebook page, Googling the amazing destination, reading travel articles about it and losing myself in the photographs. But then I'd crossly remind myself to yank my hopes back to earth in order to protect myself from sure, heart-shattering disappointment.

But yesterday morning really early, LONG before my usual wake-up time of round about the crack o' noonish, I got up and obsessively calmly checked the website to see who had been selected. The press release stated the usual "everyone was amazing, but sadly we couldn't pick you all" consolation. (Don't they KNOW that stroking your ego before brutally crushing it just makes the horrible news even WORSE?) Then they said that the chosen ones include the likes of Olympic medalists, beauty queens, Harvard grads... and that one guy even received a personal endorsement from his country's head of state, and I knew right then and there with such a crystal clear certainty that I was out. So I climbed back into bed, curled into a ball and told myself that not being picked isn't the end of the world.

I was just drifting back to sleep when a text message notification on my phone woke me up. It was Ms Gorgeous Editor and she told me that she has made it!!!!!

And... she told me... so have I.

SO HAVE I!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On August 12, her and I and two other Saffas will be jetted off to Taiwan for two glorious weeks to attend the Republic of China (Taiwan) International Youth (! According to the Taiwanese, I'm still youthful!)  Centennial Homestay celebrations with 246 other people from around the globe. We will be staying with host families and all we have to do in return for being handed this amazing adventure is to tell the world (or, in my case, my three imaginary readers) about our experiences on our blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook, or whatever other social media platforms we have available to us.

I honestly still can't believe it! I keep on staring at the list of names, expecting my (horrible) name to disappear from it when they realise their terrible mistake at including the likes of me. (I'm just kidding, judges! Please don't get any ideas?!?)

One thing is certain: I would NOT have this to look forward to had it not been for the help and encouragement of many people, from former and current employers, fellow bloggers and co-workers writing me the most lovely references, to family, to the few other people I had confided in about entering. My Gorgeous Editor has my eternal gratitude for telling me about it and inviting me to enter in the first place. I know she has told me to stop thanking her already, but wow... how can I ever thank her ENOUGH?

There is Elaine, the fabulous lady from the Taipei Liaison Office in South Africa who bent over backwards for me and graciously answered all my queries during the application process.

Then there is my darling friend Lemony, who patiently sat up with me until the wee hours (while she was ill, no less!) to listen to me stress and vent and moan and cry, making me cup after cup of coffee and just generally calming me down and jotting down my answers to the questionnaires faster than I could even dictate it! I guess you'll be getting that souvenir from Taiwan after all, Lemony!

And of course, none of this would be possible without Alice and the rest of the SayTaiwan Homestay organisers and judges.

Although I am definitely walking on clouds, my joy has been a tad subdued and bittersweet. As some of you know, this year has been particularly awful for my family. Three months later, we're still reeling from my brother-in-law's murder. I'd be lying if I said that I don't feel guilty for having this thrilling opportunity land in my lap at a time when my sister is hurting so deeply.

But bless her, for despite her grief, she is so genuinely, unselfishly happy for me...

Apparently my blog is a late bloomer. At the positively ancient age of seven years, it has began displaying shockingly rude behaviour more befitting of a l'enfant terrible of two.


One of my NON-imaginary readers (GASP!) has informed me that she had tried leaving me a comment, only to be met with the following curt response: "Text entered was wrong. Try again."

When I tried, I received the same message!

Either the blog has turned supremely bratty, or it has (belatedly) decided to punish me for all these previous years of extreme neglect by becoming a ruthless editor. Blog, baby, that will be fine, I obviously need the help. But please, learn to channel your anger into the right direction? Do not alienate my lone non-imaginary reader by wrongfully lashing out at her! That's just childish.

Update: Mysteriously, it seems to suddenly be working again now.  But please, dear imaginary (and any other kind) readers, feel free to shower me with praise comments just so that we can be 100% sure!

On this day (or rather, THAT day, since I should've posted this YESTERDAY) in 2004...

The 18th of a month has never held any lasting or particular significance for me. No immediate family member or close friend has a birthday on that date. But now, every time the 18th of the month rolls around, it quietly marks another anniversary of the terrible day that you were so violently ripped from us. Will I ever be able to note that particular date without remembering?

A few days ago, on 18 May, we reached the three month mark. Only three months. Already three months! That's an entire season. Yet I still can't believe it. I still can't wrap my mind around the enormity of your loss. I still wake up every day and I am shocked anew when I remember that you're not here anymore. I still have to catch myself when I want to refer to you in the present tense. The shock still takes my breath away.

May has been a major month for anniversaries. On the 3rd, you would have celebrated your 45th birthday. My heartbroken sister baked you a cake (your son insisted that there should be a cake for you, so she really had little choice in the matter), and we sang "Happy Birthday" while trying our best not to choke up as he and his little sister leaned across the table and blew out the candles. I remembered how last year was the first time I had ever been able to give you a proper birthday gift and how horrifically sad I was when I went into the cellar and discovered that you had been saving it for a special occasion.

A few days before your birthday this year, you received an early posthumous birthday gift of sorts. The police caught two - I erroneously called them men before, but while they are male, they are definitely NOT men; more like yellow-bellied bastards - in connection with your murder. The one was actually nabbed for another crime, but then they found the weapon that you were shot to death with among his illegal arsenal. Based on that, and on the DNA evidence linking him and his buddy to your house, the judge denied them bail earlier this week. (We have not been to any of the hearings. My sister has no interest in having to look at any of them. For a nanosecond, I thought about going, but I just couldn't summon the will or the strength either.) A few weeks ago, they caught a third one. His hearing has been postponed until June. The others are still missing. Hiding? Running? Who knows.

On the 11th, it would have been my sister's and your tenth wedding anniversary. That night, I went to visit her as usual, and when I told her what you said and how you reacted last year when I reminded you of this notable date, she laughed through her tears and said: "That's so typical."

I wish you could come back. Life is too strange and depressing and muted without you.

On February 28^th, on the morning of her 43^rd birthday, my sister woke up to a house filled with beautiful flowers and refrigerators and freezers heaving with food that had lovingly been prepared by friends and even strangers. It might sound like a dream come true to many women (especially moms of small kids) out there, but to my sister, this was evidence that the events of the preceding days had not merely been the worst nightmare she has ever had.

Just a week and a half before, her beloved husband of almost ten years was shot to death by a gang of men who had been trying to invade their farmhouse in the middle of the night. He successfully staved them off, in the process most likely saving my sister and the kids, but paid for his bravery with his own life. My sweet, seven-year old nephew woke up from the shots and incessantly pressed the panic-button on the alarm. My adorable two-and-a-half year old niece, usually a light sleeper, mercifully did not wake up during the entire horror. She has hardly slept through a single night since then. I would not be able to sleep again either if it meant that the people I love the most inexplicably disappear when I do. Would you?

How does one explain something so incomprehensible to a toddler who desperately calls out to her dad? She worshipped him and the adoration was entirely mutual. Not even at 36 years old am I able to wrap my mind around the fact that this larger-than-life man – who benevolently took me into his home when I returned from the States broke, broken-up-with and with a shattered spirit, and who bought me two cars (for which I still owe him money!) – will never ever come back again. Almost two months later, I am still solidly in denial. I cannot and will not allow myself to believe any of it. I still expect him to come striding back into the house at any moment, greeting all of us with a cheerful “Yes, yes!”, scooping up his little girl and flinging her into the air and playfully wrestling his brown-eyed pride and joy of a boy to the ground.

He cannot be gone. He is simply too loved. Too needed. Not just by my sister, his kids, us and the rest of the family, but by all the hundreds of people who depended on him for their livelihoods. Some also received regular hand-outs, we have since discovered.

My sister has been nothing short of a heroine. With two traumatised little ones and several farms and businesses to juggle and keep running, she has not been afforded the luxury of sinking into her grief and giving in to the mourning. I stand helpless and wish I could fix it. I’m so useless. I’m too filled with my own stupid neuroses to be of any practical use to her. Most of all, I want to be able to somehow bring him back to her and the kids. The light has gone from her eyes. All joy has been snuffed out. She was a passionate cook. She has not touched the stove since that day. I now know that she cooked because of him; for him.

People tell me that they don’t know what to do for her. I’m next to her and I don’t know either. My attempts at showing how much I care are hopelessly inept. I have at times been shamefully bratty, like a petulant child. Perhaps I subconsciously want her to snap and cry, because I know that she’ll eventually HAVE to, for the sake of retaining her own sanity? Even if that were true, my loathsome selfishness can’t ever be justified.

But she remains strong, swaying under the enormity of it all instead of being broken by it, as I and any other lesser person would have been. At rare, unguarded moments, the fissures of suppressed grief spread across her face, but instead of cracking, she holds steady, gathers her wits and carries on.

She is incredibly clever. Attacks are coming from all sides. She is surrounded by condescending sharks who underestimate her intelligence and knowledge. She is a woman, after all. What can she possibly know about farming? Quite a lot, it turns out, even though it was the last thing she ever wanted to do with her life. She handled all the books for more than a decade. He also spoke to her about everything. That which was undocumented (he was organised, but he also kept a lot of information in his head), she is learning to figure out as she goes along. It does not let up though. Every day, about a million crises pop up that have to be dealt with.

My brother-in-law would have been immensely proud of her.

She remains amazingly free of bitterness. The only reason why she’d ever want them caught is to save anyone else from possibly having to go through this. She also does not dabble in futile exercises such as asking: “Why me?” Unsurprisingly, I’m not as gracious about this as she is. *I* want justice. Normally a pacifist, I suddenly crave revenge. I feel slightly manic: one minute I am incredibly angry, the next I feel no emotion at all.

 

At first, my brother-in-law didn’t quite know what to make of me. When I came back from the States, I was a bundle of raw, exposed nerve. He could merely LOOK at me in an odd way, and I’d dramatically burst into tears. Despite his somewhat brusque way, I know that he absolutely hated to see anyone unhappy. He was a doer, a fixer and it unnerved him when he couldn't make something right. Sometime last year, when I burst into tears yet again over something (probably relatively inconsequential – any stress I've had before now pales in comparison to what has happened to him), he threw his hands in the air and asked: “When are you going to stop crying about everything?”

Perhaps he will feel offended to know that I finally seemed to have stopped crying on the day that he died.  

 

It is not entirely true. At home, I try and stay strong for my sister and the kids’ sakes. No tears here. I clown around until I make my nephew and niece giggle and laugh. So I have developed this nasty habit of breaking down in very public places. A few weeks after it happened, I stopped at the pharmacy to run an errand. Suddenly I remembered that I had an entire bag of my brother-in-law’s prescription medicine in the trunk of my car and took it with me. I got what was on the list and then dropped the bag on the counter and stammered: “My brother-in-law recently passed away. Is there a way that you could please safely dispose of these for us?” And then I dissolved, right there, in front of the somewhat bewildered pharmacist.

 

To other people, my brother-in-law’s murder at 44 years old was just another fleeting news headline, to be read and forgotten. It is just another in a too-long line of South Africa’s violent crime statistics (which is swept under the rug and the severity of it denied by the government). Yet to all of us – but especially to my sister, my nephew and niece – that fatal shot was like a bomb exploding, forever destroying life as we knew it.

Behold:

(Okay, kindly humour me and imagine that these words are in fact a picture of a brown box that is partially covered in courier stickers. My phone is currently acting up, so unfortunately I have been unable to transfer the photograph that I captured of the actual aforementioned object.)

This parcel with my name on it was delivered to me on Monday morning. It is now Tuesday night (scratch that, WEDNESDAY early morning now, since midnight's already come and gone) and it is STILL unopened.

Why, do you ask? Because I actually have - and I am astonished to discover this about myself - amazing self-restraint. It used to be as elusive to me as a metabolism (which, by the way, has been missing in [in]action since birth. So please, if you find a stray metabolism, kindly send it my way?). Especially considering that I have been impatiently waiting for this very delivery for a torturous two and a half weeks, during which I spent every day (perhaps even multiple times daily, since I don't fixate AT ALL) checking the shipping status of the order, as if the mere act of staring at an unchanging virtual tracking receipt on the screen would somehow speed up the entire delivery process.

So why did I not promptly rip it open in that blissful instant that I accepted it from the courier on Monday morning? Because I have a murderous deadline right now (it's killing me, even though the slaying is supposed to be the other way around) and I just knew that opening that parcel and getting lost in its wondrous contents (a book for me and a musical gift for someone else) would mean that I would get so side-tracked from work, that I would never get back to it.

Now I need all two of you, my dear imaginary readers, to tell me how incredible I am for showing such remarkable self-discipline. Okay, if not incredible, can we settle for all right, then? No?? How about just so-so..?

P.S. 12:35 AM and I STILL have not given in to the temptation to open it. Now if that is not a super-human feat, I don't know WHAT is. (And don't you dare come and tell me about the people scaling Everest without limbs, or about those poverty-stricken, motherless drug addicted children who miraculously manage to grow up and become extraordinarily successful career criminals! For someone with my lack of stamina, not opening this parcel is on par with a severely dyslexic child winning a spelling bee. Or something.)