walking to work

Yesterday on my way to the OU, while walking through a little car park that sits alongside the field I have to walk across, I came upon a woman I recognised from the OU sitting in her car, talking rather passionately on her cellphone, but sobbing with the same intensity. For a moment I thought, should I ask her if she was ok? Clearly she was not - the lone figure in a almost secluded car park in the middle of a working morning, crying loudly. I recognised this scene - I was that very woman. Many times in my life. And I could imagined what that impassioned phone call might be about. As I walked pass her car, I thought - Goodness life can really be challenging, tough and sad sometimes. But at the moment I'm grateful that my life seems to be ok, even more than ok. Sure I'm on a roller-coaster ride of emotions with this PhD - but in the grand scheme of things I'm ok.

I booked my flight back to Cape Town in September and since I've booked the ticket my head has been filled with all sorts of logistics planning as I prepare to leave the UK and settle back in Cape Town. I've been thinking about when I heard I got the scholarship to come study at the OU in June 2008. I thought about all my plans then, all my dreams, expectations, hopes and excitements. I thought about my last day in Cape Town how the realisation of what I was doing to do was slowing starting to register. Those first few months in the UK and my sister saying to me that if I wanted to come back home it would be ok, that I didn't have to feel ashamed if I came home without doing what I had set out to do - I would be accepted anyway. And me insisting that I would be fine. Now I'm planning to go back and all I think about is being in Cape Town and working on my thesis. I think about the little things, arrangements for my flat, logistics for settling back into the swing of things, of life there. Sitting in my old study working on my thesis, or spending the morning or afternoon at UCT library or my favourite cafe in Observatory, working on my thesis. I'm not thinking about the more major choices and changes I will have to cope with or the possibility that my expectations of what coming home means to me, might not be fulfilled. In many ways that September deadline is pushing me forward, it is one of my best coping mechanism at the moment.

It's Freedom Day in South Africa today - 18 years ago this time I was working at a voting station in Silvertown. Watching the hundreds (thousands maybe?) of people come to cast their votes for the very first time. I remember standing alongside my sister and boyfriend (at the time) in the line outside the voting station when they came to vote. I remember the excitement in the air, the excitement we all felt, the prospect for something new, positive in our country. It's a positive thought to have at this moment and I'll be thinking of my friends and family in SA today, as they enjoy the start of long weekend.