the familiar and the strange

I arrived in the UK on Sunday. It started to snow lightly on the drive up to Milton Keynes. My ambivalence about coming here for a month started to firm up into tangible resentment in the same way you know you have to take a small taste of slightly dodgy milk to confirm that it actually has gone off. Everything is so familar though. It's like I never left almost 6 months ago. I went to see my friend SB, who is trekking across the globe to make a new life for herself and her family today, and even though her daughter is 6 months older and more mobile and attentive than she was when I left - it felt like I had last seen them only a few weeks ago. I just slipped comfortably back into how things were before I left. Same thing happened yesterday when I went back to the flat where I spent my last 15 months in England and popped into the OU. It's all so familiar but strange at the same time. I've spoken about this before, even about coming back to Cape Town - it's an uncomfortable, comfort (that's the best I can do at this point). Although my strong South African accent and my need to infect my speech with little Afrikaans sayings here and there tend to clearly signal that I'm fresh off the plane. But things are different...most of my colleagues aren't at the OU  anymore and I'm probably not never going to have tea with SB in the JLB nexus or coffee with SP in the soft, comfortable chairs in the Hub again. But then I knew that when I left the OU in September, but I guess I expect these familiar OU-type things to happen just because I'm in the OU environment. But things change.

Just like at the moment I feel strange to be a South African in England - I feel like all the bad press about the country lately, has stuck to me in the same way the smell cooked fish pemeanates your home no matter how many windows and doors you open. How do I manage it though - do I tell people what I really feel and appear unpatrotic or do I just dismiss all the very obvious rumblings and unsettling realities of South African society and present a optimistic version of life at the tip of Africa? The society I live in is complex, fluid and dynamic and it is difficult to offer a quick little sound bite that adequately and accurately captures all that is South Africa. I feel I'm going to have to settle into my discomfort at the moment - it will pass, or some of the discomfort will pass. It will be all be fine and I have BBC TV to soothe my conflicted soul. What more can I ask for?