April 29th, 2011
It’s 7:43am and my phone rings. I don’t need to look at the phone to know it’s my wife, and I know it’s not going to be a good call. She left early to stand in line at the Department of Home Affairs to apply for permanent residency as an American married to a South African citizen. It is our second attempt to get the paperwork accepted.
She is in tears. They’re not accepting a copy of her police clearance, despite a letter from the South African Consulate in Los Angeles explicitly stating that they have seen the original and they can verify its contents. The guy who is going through her documentation is not being helpful. He is impatient and downright rude to her.
I try to think of a solution. Will they start the paperwork and we can give them the original police clearance later on? I hear muffled objections in the background as my wife asks him.
“No,” she manages to say through deep, frustrated breaths. I want to reach through the phone and punch the guy in the face. I am ashamed to send my wife into this bottomless pit of stale bureaucracy. I tell her to come home – we’ll figure it out. We’ll get the original copy from the FBI in Washington, even though that will take at least 3 months.
At 8:30 I open the gate for our domestic worker. Her name is Aretha, and she is a real-life angel. She lives in Gugulethu and she has four kids. She works full time, she volunteers at her church, and she helps out at an orphanage nearby. Then, in her spare time, she chaperones every one of her daughter’s school events, and she runs a business selling Tupperware. Every week she walks into our house with a smile, asks us how we’re doing, and then she hangs up her coat in the pantry and gets to work. She never complains. About anything. I don’t understand it.
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Posted in South Africa | Posted by Rian
October 3rd, 2010
Our daughter recently turned one, which, sure, is a big accomplishment for her. But let’s be honest, she didn’t have a whole lot to do with that accomplishment. I really think the first birthday is all about the parents. Every single birthday from now on can be about her, but I claim this one for us. Well done, us. We made it to toddlerhood.
I just scanned through some of the posts I’ve written over the past 18 months or so since we found out Jess was pregnant. It feels like a lifetime ago. I stopped writing for a while when things got really rough (that’s a story for another post), and then I started again, and then I started writing about other things. But today I want to write about 5 things I’ve learned about parenting during this first year. Which, based on #1, you might want to ignore completely. But let’s do it anyway.
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Posted in Family | Posted by Rian
September 25th, 2010
As I pull up to Mabu Vinyl in Cape Town, the first thing I notice is the businesses around it. A locksmith, an iPod repair shop (and yes, of course it’s called iFix), and a second-hand furniture store. Oh, and OutlawDVD. Cape Town’s Premium Adult DVD Superstore. Which makes me wonder how many Adult DVD Superstores Cape Town has in the first place… But I digress. In short, it’s not the best part of town.
Actually, I take that back. It’s a short, less-than-savory street in the middle of what is a really nice part of Cape Town with plenty of coffee shops and boutique clothing stores, etc. It’s one of the many reasons Cape Town reminds me of San Francisco so much — it’s a great place until you turn the wrong corner.
Anyway, it’s broad daylight, so I soldier on. As I walk up to the door, I see that it’s closed with one of those hand-written “Back in 5 minutes” signs on the door. Typical. And I love it. By the way, those signs have always bothered me. How do I know how much of the 5 minutes is left? Those signs should be electronic and just count down how much time you have left to wait. I should patent that idea.
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Posted in Music | Posted by Rian
September 14th, 2010
A couple recently walked by me and gave each other a spontaneous high five. My first thought was that we really don’t see enough of that. They were pushing a baby in a stroller, he said something, they laughed, and in one synchronous movement they shared this high five as if they were the only two people in the world. It stopped me dead in my tracks.
The Wikipedia definition of the high five is pretty dry, but it’s a good place to start:
The high five is a celebratory hand gesture that occurs when two people simultaneously raise one hand, about head high, and push, slide or slap the flat of their palm and hand against the palm and flat hand of their partner
You wouldn’t think that such a thing would be open to controversy, but apparently the origin of the high five is a bit of hotly contested history. The most credible story is that it started in US baseball in the 70s, but of course there’s some basketball player who says he executed the first high five in the 60s.
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Posted in Family | Posted by Rian
September 7th, 2010
It’s been just over a year since my wife and I decided to move from San Francisco to Cape Town. Since then we had a baby, I changed jobs, and we systematically packed up our lives and moved here in March this year.
When we first started planning the move, we agreed on one thing: it’s going to be difficult as hell, but it is a story we have to live. What I kept saying to Jess was this: The next year is not going to be easy. It’s too much change, and too much uncertainty, too quickly. But we needed to remember that a year down the road it was going to be September in Cape Town. It would be Spring, and we’d wake up to a sunrise over Table Mountain, and we’d suddenly be ok.
Last night our almost-1-year-old slept through the night, something she’s done maybe 10 nights since she was born. This morning I went for a run on the Sea Point Promenade and witnessed that sunrise over Table Mountain. I had a perfect cappuccino at Origin. And then I got an SMS from my wife to say that our daughter cut her 7th tooth. Also, someone I respect unfollowed me on Twitter, but you know, in the bigger scheme of things that’s probably ok. So yes, I’d say that we’re home now, and that everything is going to be all right.
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Posted in Family, South Africa | Posted by Rian
June 15th, 2010
The ultimate blog post to defend the use of vuvuzelas at World Cup matches has already been written, but based on the constant Twitter and Facebook onslaught I am getting about this, I really have to say a couple of things about it too.
First, consider the lead-up to this tournament. Think about the endless mockery of FIFA’s choice, the stream of articles on how South Africa does not have the ability or infrastructure to host an event of this scale. And most recently, the ridiculous reports in the British press of machete wars and who knows what else. We just sucked it up, and quietly went about our preparations.
And now, here we are, in some of the most beautiful stadiums the world has ever seen, at a tournament that is running smoothly. Reporters on the ground are talking about the “sustained display of pure joy” by South Africans in hosting and enjoying this event. There are the constant great reviews of our hospitality and friendliness. So instead of fighting about inefficiency or bad logistics at matches, we’re fighting about vuvuzelas?
Ok, we’re fighting about vuvuzelas. So come, let us reason together.
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Posted in South Africa | Posted by Rian
May 31st, 2010
This weekend I had the best coffee I’ve ever had. My good friend Wil has a large bag of unroasted, green coffee beans from Kenya, and I watched as he prepared a cup for me. The whole process took about 30 minutes — from roasting the beans in a popcorn maker, to grinding them as fine as possible, and then finally brewing the coffee in a stove top espresso maker. It was so much more than just another coffee.
I told this story to a friend at work today, and he sent me this quote in response (my emphasis added):
Another important element of addiction is ritual. Something as simple as eliminating the rituals that accompany the addiction can be enough to cause the addiction to lose appeal. Powerful aspects of the addiction are obtained from the ritual itself, such that without it, the behavior or substance no longer is accompanied by euphoria. Heroin is a good example. The ritual of injecting heroin and the lifestyle involved in the pursuit and use of the drug is a part of the addiction. Taking away these components, as is done in methadone clinics, often reforms addicts on these bases alone.
If I arrived too late to be there for the preparation of the coffee, would it have tasted differently? Would vinyl LP’s sound as good as they do if there wasn’t so much work involved in maintaining and playing them? Are we really this predictable, this easy to manipulate, that the lead-up to an event can have such a big impact on the enjoyment of it?
Yes, yes we are.
Posted in Anything goes | Posted by Rian
April 5th, 2010
It has now been two weeks since we arrived back in Cape Town after an 8 year stint living abroad, and I am still hesitant to write this post. I keep thinking that I need to give it more time, that my unconditional euphoria about being back has to be some kind of temporary adrenalin rush. That the other shoe will drop and suddenly I’ll be faced with a strange reality, left only with thoughts of “What have we done!?” And maybe that will still happen. But right now, as I sit on our balcony in Sea Point overlooking the Promenade and the vast blue ocean, I’m tempted to give up the fight and embrace what my wife told me over lunch today… What took us so long to move back?
It’s hard to explain, but my spirit lifted the minute we landed in Cape Town (after a grueling 2-day journey with our 6-month old, but that’s a story for a different blog post). After recuperating at my parents’ house in Stellenbosch for a few days, we moved into our flat in Sea Point a week ago, and we just can’t believe how lucky we are to live here in this amazing place.
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Posted in Featured, South Africa | Posted by Rian
March 11th, 2010
A friend recently posted this Paulo Coelho quote on Facebook:
Trust and start walking. We are not alone in the dark, our path will unfold as we move. R.L.Stevenson once said: “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” If you can’t move in the physical world, move in your imagination, but MOVE.
A lovely sentiment, but as someone who is preparing to move countries in less than two weeks, the reality is quite different. A recent New York Times article entitled The Psychology of Moving summed it up pretty well:
Whether one moves frequently or almost never, moving is an intensely emotional experience. The underlying psychological issues involved in real estate decisions are of great interest to therapists and psychologists, because housing and moving are filled with symbolism, the hope for new beginnings, crushing disappointments, loss, anxiety and fear.
“Panic can really set in around your home and your apartment,” said Ronnie Greenberg, a Manhattan psychoanalyst. “It’s a matrix of safety, so moving is incredibly stressful and people don’t realize it — they mainly talk about the packing and the external part of moving.”
That’s certainly not as sexy as the first statement, but it is most certainly closer to the truth (except for the part about not realizing how stressful it is. I have pretty good grasp of how stressed I am right now!).
To go a little further (and definitely more eloquently) into the realities of moving, I want to go back to a great book everyone should read, The Art of Travel. Alain De Botton says the following: Keep Reading →
Posted in South Africa, Travel | Posted by Rian
February 6th, 2010
I am not sure how this happened, but I had never read the preamble to South Africa’s Constitution. Until my friend Annie posted it on her blog earlier this week. I felt even more ashamed after reading it there because she is not even South African – she is an American who emigrated to South Africa! So, yeah, she wins.
But I finally read it, and it gave me goosebumps. So for anyone out there who have also not read it, here it is…
We, the people of South Africa,
Recognise the injustices of our past;
Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;
Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and
Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.
We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to:
- Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
- Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.
May God protect our people.
Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.
God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.
Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.
I’m proud to be from a country where we can openly and honestly acknowledge the mistakes of our past, so that we don’t repeat them in the future.
Posted in South Africa | Posted by Rian
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