Bumping Along

I began this blog to keep record of my experience with different people and places that I encountered on this journey. However, the ways in which I change and move and shift will alternately continue to influence the way I experience my time here. So, bear with me - a little view of Shannon looking at herself! And typically, it’s a bit of a long side-track - just warning!

I fear as I’ve been settling into my new life in Cape Town my writing has taken a slide. I keep finding myself running into me, over and over and over again, which is not so interesting in written form. When you’re by yourself it’s easy to keep bumping into distracting mirror images and it’s difficult to jump those hurdles as well. Perhaps that’s why it feels so crucial to give myself this time to see who I am without a million reminders of myself - there’s rarely anyone but myself to commend or blame in any situation.

You see this image of the butterfly clinging to its former self? I find it quite poetic and comparable to what I just said, though I’m not going to begin digging into that one! I’ve been watching this pupa grow itself. The chrysalis has been carefully webbed to the outside of my porch window for weeks now and I’ve been careful not to open the window fully, so as not to crush it. I saw the wings start to form but have lost track as I’ve been so busy. Just today the butterfly appeared, fully grown, fully formed, hanging onto it’s old shell.

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The cocoon not being so obvious, nor the winged development, how have I grown or been challenged whilst here?

I have had to grapple with the reality of my ambitions; I have had to work quickly to adapt to teaching environments where planning hasn’t been possible. I have had to think on my feet and go with my gut.

I’ve learned to drink sparkling water, enjoy hot English mustard on my sandwiches, and to stomach a fried egg on toast.

Slow down - I have also learned to relax, slowly but surely. I am only teaching 3 days a week right now, with 4 days off and I am enjoying every one of them. I am busy, but not so busy. I don’t have a shower so I have to take baths at night and even there I have at last learned to shut off my brain and to enjoy the bubbles!

I’ve found that becoming vegetarian and giving up beef eons ago has made my stomach roll at the smell of beef - what a shame in a place where most cows grain-fed on lolling hills.

Big one - I’ve learned to drive a manual car! What a mission, as South Africans so often say! What is it about learning and re-learning that becomes so much more difficult with age? I know in this case it was mostly out of fear - fear of rolling backwards, fear of not being able to pull myself up, fear of not being able to simultaneously manage a clutch and an accelerator, fear of not being able to have control. Could this be a metaphor of self-change? Learning how to shift more easily, with more grace? It has felt anything but graceful, it is a bumpy ride, it is a car lurching and stalling, it is the power of being able to start on a steep hill, it is the empowerment of being able to succeed on my own.

I am finding how hard it is to be more flexible and to let go of what it is I think I want - sometimes we don’t get to choose and it’s more important to go with the flow. This is by far my biggest struggle. But flexibility, that’s a laid back Cape Town mentality for you, so I guess this is the place to learn!

Doris, who comes by to clean Margie’s flat every week, and I have been talking about Xhosa, her mother tongue. She keeps reminding me that to learn it is about embracing the mistakes - and not to be afraid of making the wrong sound or to not enunciate my “clicks” clearly enough! Good lesson for the English schoolteacher. You don’t learn if you’re afraid.

And I am still learning how to take the opportunities that present themselves to me and turn them into something from which I can learn. Presently I’m trying to determine how I can provide art to the students at my school, how to build a program that will last, how to fund it, etc.

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Other notable sensations and lessons being learned in Cape Town:

• The smell of bush fire permeating the air - learning to discern the clear, unadulterated smoke of a bush fire from that of dirty, tar infested house fire.
• An internet signal so sensitive it’s affectedly weakened by the wind.
• Wind so strong, 40+ miles an hour, that I have to pause and hold on to poles for support when walking some days.
• Cape Town at night along the N2 hwy, a bubble of glittery dots, a fantastical looking harbor nest.
• An old blue car being towed backwards by 2 horses, flanking the car on either side outside of Khayelitsha.
• Gecko with 2 tails - perhaps from shedding one when I scooped it from my living room back to the garden (they shed their tails as a defense mechanism)? Bizarre sight to behold!
• The taxi drivers are all on strike - no one really understands why and yet it means children don’t go to school and people cannot go to work…
• The bottled water at a nice restaurant usually costs more than the cheapest glass of wine.

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