Imagine a day full of African border crossings, packing and repacking frozen prawns between coconuts and a freezer to avoid smuggling charges, only to return to a house with dead flowers bordering its walls, a freezer full of rotting meat and a tiled floor covered with 2-week old, congealed blood. Now to top this off, your relationship has met its end and, after countless days in a shared truck cab & small tents in steaming, hot Mozambique with happy-clappy tourists buzzing about sharing the love, you are home. The last thing you want to do is collaborate on cleaning out a death-sentence-evoking refrigerator, and yet you must. Yes, it's true.
Granted, all reactions to my sad news are acceptable. For now, I'd like to keep my explanations under wraps, for it's all a bit intense to be broadcasting this "live" online. Suffice it to say, my heart is sore, sore, sore. However, at the end of the day, Johannes and I are as different as day and night and for all that I embrace difference, it doesn't seem to create any healthy-functioning in our relationship as two very strong-minded people.
Now on to the interesting bit: what next? Obviously I cannot continue to live with Johannes, nor can I survive solo on my teacher's wages. I see that twisting mouth Grand-Dub, hoping I'll be bearing some good news....well, it is, but sadly not the sort grandmothers want to read. Over the last couple of months, in and amongst a whole process of trying to figure out how Johannes and I would ever truly "work," I have been offered an amazing job opportunity. The group I worked with in the Free State in 2008, Dramatic Need, actually approached me with the job opportunity to be their South African Project Manager. Thus, I have accepted and will be returning to Viljoenskroon in July to start my new job.
Two of my main jobs will include overseeing the construction and implementation of a new arts centre on the grounds of Rietpan Farm AND managing other volunteers from the UK and USA who come through to teach art. I will also be liasing with local communities, schools, and initiating adult education programmes. It's a job that combines my interests in art, organizing, youth, education and social justice -- something I've been imagining in my head for sometime, but unable to conceive as coming together in such fashion.
I've been busy making lists of Pros & Cons and trying to decided if it's time I returned to the old U S of A. While the country of my home weighs dearly on my heart, with all the people bound and wound in its arms, I'm excited for such a job opportunity to come my way and cannot let it pass me by. I hope another lengthy stay in SA will not further sever my ties with family, friends, and the hopes that I will someday return for good (I am going to try to be home xmas 2010!). All I know is that it is the right decision for me right now, given that I've been thinking it over the last two months.
Meanwhile, school runs another week and the World Cup bang will submerge South Africa in a delight of foreigners, vuvuzelas (loud horns used at games here), madhouse traffic and an extended school holiday. I will more than likely return to Cape Town in a couple of weeks to clear my head, grab my car, and move into my new slot in Viljoenskroon. It seems as though Johannes and I will part amicably. While in Mozambique, he also got the news that he will be working for the farm owners at their house in Belgium sometime in the next year. So in many ways, my moving to a new job and his opportunity in Belgium would have forged a natural split anyways. We both deserve to be happy, so I'm hoping we can go out with this easily.
In another blog later this week, I will give full details of Mozambique life plus photos....since I've now stepped into a school busy with exams, I'm going to be tearing my hair out over the next few days trying to stay afloat!!!
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