We love it when we hear from expats from around world and
when
South Africa-based expat, Sine Thieme got in touch and shared with us this
beautiful account of her experience in South Africa, we thought it was only
right to spread the love to the rest of our readers…
Living in South Africa
One thing I love about living in
South Africa
is that our lives suddenly seem to be filled with adventure. In the space of
little more than a year, we have become scuba certified and gone on several
diving trips, watched our teenage son hurl himself into the void off the
world’s highest bungee jumping bridge, swam with great white sharks, ridden on
elephants, battled a bush fire, gone on several safaris - one of them from a
balloon - and paddled on the Zambezi river above Victoria Falls.
This could be due to the fact that you always try to live
more intensely when you’re an
expat,
knowing that your
assignment
will end all too soon, and wanting to explore as much as you can while given
the chance. But I think South Africa has something special.
South
Africans love their country, they love spending time outdoors, and they love
sharing their joy with others. From the day we set foot here we got swept up in
this spirit of exploration and we haven’t slowed down since then.
When we arrived here in March 2010, I was very determined
to methodically check off the typical post-move stuff before exploring the new
world around us:
open bank account,
get phone, internet, sign school forms, find doctors, buy a car... However, it
didn’t quite happen like that. Everything moves a lot slower here than my
efficient American housewife self could ever have imagined, often throwing two
new problems in your way when you’ve just finally gotten rid of one. I remember
well those early days, how I’d finally inched closer to getting that elusive
traffic register number, which is a prerequisite for buying a car, only to find
out on my third trip to the registration office that I wouldn’t be allowed to
register after all, since my husband was the one with the job and the visa. Or
I’d wait – in vain - perched over the phone for the promised callback “just
now,” only to be enlightened by friends later that “just now” in South Africa
means “maybe,” at best.
Africa, it seems, was just as determined teaching me
patience as I was determined to bend it to my will. Needless to say, I admitted
defeat when I realised after more than a year that I was still carrying around
with me the same dog-eared to-do list that I’d written the first day. The
curious thing is that I’m grateful rather than annoyed. It’s amazing how well
life goes on even if certain things simply do not get done, or at least take a
lot longer than you expect. Your
power
is cut off? Back home I would have been on the phone within minutes to
complain to some person of authority. Here, I shrug my shoulders and go read a
book, fairly certain that eventually it will come on again. And when it does, I
have great material to type up yet another story about the wondrous workings of
South African bureaucracy.
Making the move
Moving to South Africa can be very scary. At least up to
the point where you actually do the moving. I remember googling South Africa
and Johannesburg when the prospect of relocating first came up, and I was
shocked to find out that we probably wouldn’t survive the trip from the airport
to our house. Every expat forum discussing South Africa tries to outdo the next
one in terms of spreading crime horror stories, so that when you finally arrive
here you are saddled with a huge amount of anxiety that takes time to shed,
little by little, until you wake up one morning and realise you live in a
beautiful place.
Yes, Johannesburg isn’t the safest city, but that is true
for many other cities out there. Most locals will tell you that you just have
to be “sensible” and I find that to be very true. You’re careful where you go
at night and you keep your eyes open, but you also realise that the possibility
of crime and bad luck can’t rule your life.
There are so many positives of living in Johannesburg:
The weather is beautiful year-round (I think we must get 355 days of sunshine a
year). The flowers here are gorgeous, and though winters are pretty cold, they
are very short. Domestic help is easily available. There is nothing in the
world that quite matches an African sky at sunset. The people are friendly and
fun-loving.
On top of this, there are amazing opportunities to travel
and explore, be it to nearby
Pilanesberg to view the
Big Five in the wild, to the snow-covered
Drakensberg, to Cape Point at the
Southern tip of the continent, to one of the best wine-making regions of the
world near
Stellenbosch and
Franschhoek, to the beautiful wild
beaches of
Sodwana Bay and the St.
Lucia Wetlands in the East, to the majestic
Kruger Park, or to the parched sand
dunes of Namibia. Southern Africa offers an amazing variety of landscapes,
climates, and wildlife that you won’t easily find anywhere else.
What has helped us settle in quickly was the wonderful
group
of friends we’ve made. We had opted to send our four children to a South
African private school, rather than an international one, and were admittedly
anxious how that would work out in terms of friends. We needn’t have worried.
Most of our friends are South Africans, with a sprinkling of expats, and we
couldn’t be happier. In fact,
enrolling
your kids in a local school is one of the best ways to truly experience a
country, even if they might have more of an adjustment to master upon returning
or moving on. What they learn in terms of a new culture far outweighs what they
might learn academically. It’s a bit of a shock when you have to go from
basketball and baseball to netball, cricket, and field hockey, but if you keep
an open mind about it, you will be surprised how much fun it is (and –
sacrilege - you might discover that rugby is indeed superior to football).
Another myth about Africa that I’d like to dispel is that
it is a parched and hot place. Yes, the weather is mostly beautiful where we
live and there is a lot of sunshine to go around, but it’s such a dry heat that
more often than not you end up being chilly as soon as you sit in the shade or
the sun goes down. When it does finally rain in the summer months, it feels
more like winter. I’ve been colder than ever before in my life when going on
early morning game drives in a drafty safari vehicle, and our kids make fun of
me because it takes a really hot day before I as much as dip my big toe
into the pool.
One aspect of life in South Africa that is really hard to
get used to is the extreme poverty all around you. Even though it has been over
fifteen years since the end of apartheid and the advent of a true democracy,
masses of people still live in mere shacks, crowded together in townships, with
barely any access to running water and electricity. South Africa is so much
more developed and westernised than the rest of Africa, and yet there is this
huge discrepancy between rich and poor. Nevertheless, you will hardly find a
place with more cheerful and friendly people than South Africa, and the energy
and vibrancy all around you is palpable. Life seems to be painted in bolder
strokes in Africa.
If we had listened to all the naysayers condemning South
Africa for its crime rate, or if we had been discouraged by the ridiculous
amount of paperwork you’re required to submit to obtain your visa, we might
never have moved here. We would have been the poorer for it, as this is an
amazing place to live. And there is still a lot of exploring for us to do! To
find out more about our expat adventures in South Africa, visit
http://joburgexpat.blogspot.com.
About the author
Sine Thieme, also
known as
Joburg Expat among her
fellow expats and bloggers in Johannesburg, moved to South Africa in 2010
together with her husband and four children. Her blog chronicles life in South
Africa in all its beautiful and at times irritating variations. She blogs at
http://joburgexpat.blogspot.com/
and tweets
@sthieme
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