The Bitch at the Braai

Yet another month goes by without internet at home. Was it really FOUR months ago that I last blogged here?? So much has happened that, to merely reiterate the cliche, I wouldn't know where to begin! But that doesn't matter because I'm going to leave that all out and bring you up to date on where we are at right now:
We are still living in Grahamstown (Eastern Cape) and I am finally beginning to feel like I belong in this dusty, gossipy little 'city'! At the beginning of December we moved into the accomodation the school converted for us from what used to be a boys' dormitory - hence the lack of internet and phoneline: it all has to be approved by the governing body, yadda-yadda-yadda. Being right across the road from the school means that I have the use of the car because Craig walks to school. Layla and I also spend an hour or so actually at the school - having tea in the staffroom during breaktime, helping Amy* in the library, sitting in on the music lessons, watching the (world class!!) marimba band practise, playing in the primary school's playground etc.
*Amy: Amy and her husband and 18month old Tom are also recently returned from the UK as of three months ago. So watch this space for more confirmation and information that it is the right thing to do to come home!
Anyway - that's all desperately boring compared to what kept me awake last night: what happened during our braai last night!
Picture this: Wors, chicken kebabs, lamb chops. Salad. Garlic bread. Coke. Red wine. Simple, unextravagant fare, but a feast for the average South African. (And if you know what it's like to furtively braai so your British neighbours aren't offended by the braai smoke - and to have driven all the way to the South African shop for astronomically expensive wors - then you will understand just how much more beautiful and meaningful it is to braai on home soil!) And the point of that parenthesis is that the South Africans who entered into the very heated argument with me last night have NEVER lived away from South Africa --- and they are adamant that there is no future here, they want to move overseas etc. (You know the story.)
Anyway, back to what was actually argued about. I can't really even remember what started it all off - but whatever it was snowballed out of control too quickly for me to keep my heart under lock and key. And so it was that I placed my heart on the table for all to see - and I think they mistook it for a lambchop! They stabbed at it with forks and spat it out again: I am distasteful, apparently, in my own particular South African outlook. I was defending the fact that South Africa is quite normal as a country. The particular point-in-fact was the corruption in our government. And when I reflected back at them the recent corruption by MPs in the UK who funnelled money into their own accounts to buy second and third houses for themselves, I was looked at as though I was an inexperienced little child who had no right stepping into their little bitch-and-moan. Ag, there is so much, much more that I want to tell you about this whole thing, but my free-mommy-time is running out (as usual) but I PROMISE to try and write again in the next few days before I forget the specifics of the debate. If only I could have recorded it on camera: it was a perfect microcosm of our whites' political attitudes du jour.
(a little note re: the post title: I am obviously The Bitch at the braai, but the 'bitch' is also the  aggressive and apathetic bitch-and-moan. Just thought I should point out to you what a literary genius I am *wink*)
Here is a quote from the novel by Andre Brink I'm reading at the moment, "An Instant in the Wind":
Too white for the truth.
What a brave man to have written this story in 1976... I think that if you can arrive at the point of realising, if you are white, that the truth does frighten you/make you aggressively defensive etc, then you have arrived at a place where you can begin to invest in the present state of our country as a South African. That critical moment of change in perspective in just one mind will ignite the change in the other minds around it. But why is the white mind so lazy and terrified to apprehend the truth then? Hmmm...
Here are some recent pics of our continued and increasing joy and peace at being home.

Granny and Layla share the most special of kisses only grannies and grandchildren share - and something so frustratingly, saddeningly impossible on Skype...

My bedside table: an antique hand-embroidered 'lappie' from my best friend in Cape Town, a silk scarf that belonged to my late mother-in-law, my late grandfather's bottle of Old Spice from the 1960s...

Layla playing with our neighbours, Darry and Lukes, washing the tricycle they have given her. They also lived in the UK for awhile, but are another proud and very happy returned South African family! (We just never managed to make friends like this in our little English village... Lovely friends, but still somehow detached...) It was, um... bloody lonely!! (Apologies to Jody and Dylbo who we gratefully met in the last two months of our stay in the UK!)

Layla's first camping trip in the Wilderness! It was incredibly special to see my little girl experiencing all the magic of these idyllic Wilderness holidays that made my girlhood so magical...

To hear the hero-worship in Layla's hysterical glee as Granny pulled her along in the canoe is something, again, that Skype just fails at heartbreakingly!

And what could replace the perfect 'South Africa as home' combination of the Spur and Granny?!

Layla wouldn't let me put her warm top on before a braai - only 'Teve' (her beloved Uncle Steve) was allowed to!

Adios for now. Another post later this week detailing the attitudes expressed during the Bitch at the Braai.

Liefde,
Lisa