Back Home - 4 months and counting...

Since I last had a chance to write, I decided to send my little princess to playschool 5 mornings a week as the seeming randomness of only going on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays confused her - so as of this week she'll be at school every day, which also means that I can start writing again! (Not being able to write was, and I'm not exaggerating, like drowning. And drowing very, very slowly.)

Twice-a-week updates are what I'm aiming for, though I'd write every single day if I could! But there is so much happening at the moment, that I'll need to use this time that Layla is at school more wisely than I have ever used time!! For example, our house at the school (where we'll only be paying about a fifth of what we pay now (i.e. R5 500/month) and I think/hope that'll include water and electricity as well!) will be ready for us by the end of the month - so I've got to try and pack up our things here without Layla actually seeing me packing the boxes. Twice since we've arrived back from the UK, I've needed to repack our boxes when I was in Cape Town: first, when the boxes arrived in South Africa via Allfreight's fabulous service, and I needed to unpack them to check what was damaged/what I wanted to take with me back to Grahamstown. And then second, when I was in Cape Town two weeks ago, I spent many hot hours in my parents' attic sorting through the random bits of furniture and repacking my stuff for freight-by-truck to Grahamstown. And both times, Layla's anxiety levels skyrocketed upon witnessing this packing of boxes. Seeing just how perceptive and deeply sensitive my child has made me rethink my entire modus operandi of parenting... But more about this at a later stage.

And then there is the matter of me finding work for next year. Perhaps an art teaching position at St Andrews? And if that doesn't pan out, then I'll focus on setting up a studio for the collective/co-operative I've set up with two of my friends. At the moment, we're each working from home, but if I can find a space for us to work from together for next year, then we'd be able to work that much more quickly and efficiently! Our company's name is Oodade which is the Xhosa word for 'sisters'. Inspired by the work my sister commissioned me to do for her space at Kamersvol Geskenke, as well as by the bond of sisterhood I share with my fellow South African women, Nokwayiyo and Nosiphiwo arrived in my life like sunshine and blessings with their grace, warmth, joy and industrious talent! I'll link back here to the Oodade blog I've set up (*wink*)

Not much Safrophilic news there, but I thought I sommer just had to write AND to explain my long absence from these pages.