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.

This whole debate eventually boils down to one simple question: What responsibility does a host nation of an event have towards foreign visitors to the event? That really is it.  If you look at the arguments on both sides, that is what it comes down to.

• Vuvuzela supporters defend its usage by saying that it’s part of an African World Cup experience, that you can’t make us change our ways just because you’re bothered by it.
• Vuvuzela haters say it is annoying, distracting, and when it comes down to it, rude to impose it on them.  They’re basically saying:  “Do this at your own matches, but don’t bring it to the World Cup.”

So what is our responsibility to visitors?  Three things:

• Keep them safe
• Show them a great time
• Give them an African experience

It’s that last one that’s the crux of the matter.  Why travel all the way to South Africa just to have a soccer tournament that looks like it could be in America or Europe?  Why would you want to be in the country for the soccer, but lose out on all the other authentic, local experiences we have to offer?  And why would we want you to miss out on everything that makes us who we are?  Isn’t an important part of hospitality making you one of us, instead of viewing you as an outsider and walking on egg shells around you?  And by the way, FIFA president Joe Blatter agrees:

I understand that the sound is annoying to some.  For us, we can’t imagine it any other way.  Yes, we need to make you feel welcome here.  And we really want you to have a fantastic time.  But we also want you to experience what it means to live in Africa.  So instead of complaining about the vuvuzela, pick one up at your friendly street corner vendor, and blow it.  All the time.  Go sit in a coffee shop and read the local paper.  Get out of Sandton and go have a beer in Soweto.  Rent a car and get out of town into the unimaginable beauty that awaits you.  You’ll see why we love our country so much.

And to those who are watching the games on mute on their TVs and complaining from afar — you really are missing out.  That constant droning symbolizes the exhilaration, stress, and release that is at the heart of what makes soccer such a great game.  Come on, give it another shot, and try to live it with us, not just watch it.

So, listen.  We’re not being rude.  We’re inviting you to come in and make yourself at home.  Please don’t be rude by refusing the invitation.

:============<()   Save the vuvuzela!

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.

The beauty in this area of the world is simply stunning.  This weekend I got up and went for a run along the ocean as the foghorns were working overtime, and 100s of runners were enjoying the early morning ocean-quiet with me.  We spent the day at Camps Bay and Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and we were left only with thoughts of how blessed we are to have all of this right at our doorstep.

There is chaos here, but it doesn’t feel like chaos, it just feels like life.  When we walk around in downtown Sea Point I sense an energy and a vibrancy that is almost tangible.  As I watch and talk to people, as we experience the diversity of cultures and emotions all around us, I can’t help but fall in love with Africa all over again.  And my wife, who is American, feels exactly the same way.

There are those who tell me we’re crazy for moving back, but the love-hate relationship South Africans have with their country is also part of what draws me to this place — we don’t shy away from the bad stuff, and we don’t shut up about our opinions.

Yes, there are many problems in South Africa.  Serious, serious problems.  And I am not oblivious to it — I remain vigilant and always mindful of the safety of my family, and I’d be lying if I said this weekend’s killing of Eugene Terre’blanche doesn’t make me nervous.  But I see in this country a potential that is so different and unique to anything I’ve experienced living in Australia and America.

Let me put it this way.  When I was in high school, rugby was everything.  The problem is that our school really sucked at it.  We weren’t even allowed to play in the same league as our main rivals in town (Paul Roos Gymnasium), because the embarrassment would just be too devastating and there were fears we would grow up weak and bruised for life.  But the words our coach spoke to us one afternoon after practice have stuck with me ever since:

He told us, yes, we could attend Paul Roos and be part of a great rugby school, a school that has accomplished everything there is to accomplish, a school at the top of the rankings.  Or we could stay here, at Stellenbosch High, and help build something from the ground up.  Now, sure, he was just trying to make us feel better.  But the words rang true.

Living in America was wonderful — I love the country and its people, and I am amazed at how smoothly everything works, and how easy it is to live there.  But here’s the thing: America doesn’t need me.  I can’t really contribute much there.  There are 1,000′s of people there who have the exact same skillset I do.

But here, in Cape Town, in my country, I can become part of something.  The Silicon Cape initiative is getting off the ground.  The user experience community is starting to thrive.  I can be a part of that — and here’s the bonus: I can do it in a place that is brimming with hope and immeasurable beauty.  How can I pass that chance up?

During our last week in America, I reminded my wife at some point that we are taking a big risk by moving here.  The job pool is smaller, there are countless political challenges.  You know what she told me?  ”A safe life is a boring life.”  And she was right (as usual).

So we take this risk and we embrace it with both arms.  So far we are loving every minute of it.  Hard times will come, but we are here, now, and this is our home.  Here, in Africa, we plant ourselves.

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:

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest—in all its ardour and paradoxes—than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival.

Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems—that is, issues requiring thought beyond the practical. We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’.

At the heart of what makes moving such a complex emotional and physical endeavor is what Alain calls “the relationship between the anticipation of travel and its reality.”   It is never what you think it’s going to be, and that results in a lot of stress and mixed emotions.

The problem is that we can never fully anticipate all the mundane details involved in moving.  So we focus on the outcome — the first breakfast in your new home, the first family walk.  But oh, how the reality of the journey hurts.  One more quote from The Art of Travel that sums this up much better than I can:

If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination. Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

A travel book may tell us, for example, that the narrator journeyed through the afternoon to reach the hill town of X and after a night in its medieval monastery awoke to a misty dawn. But we never simply ‘journey through an afternoon’. We sit in a train. Lunch digests awkwardly within us. The seat cloth is grey. We look out the window at a field. We look back inside. A drum of anxieties revolves in our consciousness. We notice a luggage label affixed to a suitcase in a rack above the seats opposite. We tap a finger on the window ledge. A broken nail on an index finger catches a thread. It starts to rain. A drop wends a muddy path down the dust-coated window. We wonder where our ticket might be. We look back out at the field. It continues to rain. At last the train starts to move. It passes an iron bridge, after which it inexplicably stops. A fly lands on the window.

And still we may have reached the end only of the first minute of a comprehensive account of the events lurking within the deceptive sentence ‘He journeyed through the afternoon’.

So, there’s that.  But I guess the point is that, somehow, you get through it.  You journey through the afternoon, and you get where you need to be.  And after the dust settles you are left with the sense of accomplishment that comes from beating down a challenge — and a new beginning to make.

So even though I know the reality of getting there is going to be pretty bad, I need to keep my eyes on that first breakfast in Cape Town.  And that, I guess, is the art of moving.

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.

Since our family is moving back to Cape Town in March after 6 years in America, I read the article with great interest.  And as far as rants go, this is a pretty good one.  This guy isn’t holding anything back.  You can read the post here if you’re so inclined.

Now, towards the end of the post, he wrote this piece of advice to people like us who are planning to come back:

If you are overseas, and Africa is in your bones, and you’re feeling duped by SA’s advertising that it’s all getting better (yes, Homecoming Revolution, I am talking about YOU) then don’t believe the hype. If you are white, you are unemployable, no matter how many skills or how much experience you have. Unless you are coming to participate in greed culture, and are willing to risk everything you have saved overseas (yes, overseas we have disposable income – we CAN save), then don’t be tempted by summers and blue skies. Get a UV light to combat the winter depression, but think very carefully before putting South Africa back on your radar.

So let me just address a couple of points in that paragraph straight up:

• Homecoming Revolution has been extremely helpful to me in our preparations for returning home.  Their website has great resources, their staff have always been responsive and friendly, and they helped me connect with the right people when I had questions.  They also didn’t push FNB’s banking services on me — when they heard I already have an ABSA account, they didn’t pursue the matter any further (Homecoming Revolution is sponsored by FNB).
• I am white, and therefore unemployable according to the author.  And even though I understand hyperbole and assume that’s what he was going for, I do want to point out that I am returning to a great job that I am extremely excited about.
• “Greed culture”?  As opposed to the UK and the US where everyone is sitting around singing Kumbaya and figuring out how they can give their money away to other people?  No my friend, South Africa is no more nor less greedy than any other nation in the world.
• Listen, there’s a lot to be said for those summers and blue skies.  For example:

So anyway, I don’t want to make this a long post because I have coffee brewing and I don’t want it to get cold.  But let me just say this.  The author wants me to cancel our tickets and not make the same mistake he made.  And I am not denying that he’s had a bad experience.  But his beef seems mostly with Homecoming Revolution (who’s been great to me) and FNB (not my bank).

So I’m just going to go ahead and ignore his advice.  Partly because our tickets are booked and I already sold my Xbox.  But mostly because I know three very important things:

1. No country is perfect
2. With the right attitude and a little bit of help from your friends you can make it anywhere
3. South Africa is my home

See you in March, Cape Town!

So go unlock the door
And find what you are here for
Leave the great indoors
Leave the great indoors

I started this blog when I first moved to the US with only a backpack and my guitar almost 6 years ago, and I named it “Leave the great indoors” because these John Mayer lyrics resonated so well with that strange mix of bewilderment and excitement you feel when you start a new adventure that turns your life upside down (and makes you feel so ridiculously alive).

A lot has changed over the past 6 years as I got married to my lovely American wife and we got settled into day-to-day life.  But unfortunately so much has stayed the same, and over the past year or so Jess and I have grown increasingly restless in our comfortable indoors.  It is a testament to the success and brilliance of America just how easy it is to live here.  Everything just, well, works.  Sure, America is not without its problems, but let’s agree on one simple fact: it works.

Ironically, in that blessing that is the American Dream also lies the country’s biggest curse: the undeniable draw into all-consuming consumerism and complacency.  You can end up defining yourself by things like how big your car is or how quickly you can get promoted at work — and let’s face it, there are more important things in life.  It is this slow descent into just another branded life that brought Jess and I to a point where we finally made the decision we always knew we’d make at some point in our lives: moving back to South Africa.

Donald Miller, in his book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, perfectly sums up the thought process that brought us to this point:

If [it's true about] a good story being a condensed version of life — that is, if story is just life without the meaningless scenes — I wondered if life could be lived more like a good story in the first place.  I wondered if a person could plan a story for his life and live it intentionally.

So now, once again, we are in the process of leaving the great indoors to write a new story.  Moving back to South Africa was always our long-term plan — we were just waiting for the right time.  We have since realized that there is never a “right time” for major life changes, you just need to jump in.

I also realized that there are already enough blog posts and stories about expats who moved back to South Africa, and the reasons why they did it.  And yes, all those reasons apply to us: the beautiful scenery, the amazing people, being close to family, the vitality of a country in flux, the excitement of being a part of something bigger than yourself, and of course, just because it is impossible to get Africa out of your blood.

But in the end, the reason that ended up being the tipping point for us is something a little less romantic, a little more universal.  We are tired of being complacent. Sure, you don’t need to move countries to get out of that funk, and everyone’s story is different.  But our story needs this.  For us, moving back is the fulfillment of the quintessential African Dream: to find a place where you can get your hands dirty and help build a nation with limitless potential.

Yes, it won’t be easy.  But to quote Donald Miller again:

When we watch the news [and stories about violence come on], we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it.  Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are in.  We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.

So we are ready for this story, and all the conflict it may bring.  We’ll see you in the Silicon Cape in March of 2010.

Does your story need a little conflict?  Make it happen!

Speech to South African youth on Day of Affirmation in 1966

First, the news coverage of Sen. Kennedy’s death led me to the eulogy he gave at his brother Robert’s funeral in 1969.  In his eulogy Sen. Kennedy quotes from a remarkable speech entitled “A Tiny Ripple of Hope” that Robert Kennedy gave in Cape Town on June 6, 1966 on the “Day of Affirmation.”  Here are some excerpts from that speech – powerful words that may just as well have been spoken yesterday to the current generation of South Africans:

There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember — even if only for a time — that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek — as we do — nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth — not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

It was a call to action back then, and it still is today. A call to not stand idly by to injustice around us, and a call to look beyond the “familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success” and get involved in a positive way in our local communities. Below is an audio version of Sen. Kennedy’s eulogy. It is a stirring speech and well worth a listen:

Sen. Edward Kennedy’s eulogy to Robert Kennedy:

Sen. Edward Kennedy’s visit to South Africa in 1985

And then, in 1985, amid enormous political unrest in South Africa over apartheid, Sen. Kennedy visited South Africa to stand up against apartheid, at a time where most of the West were still ignoring what was happening in the country.  From an article in Global Post this morning:

At the invitation of Desmond Tutu, Kennedy visited South Africa in January 1985 in a trip denounced by the apartheid regime at the time. On his return to the United States, Kennedy introduced the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1985, legislation that sought to impose economic sanctions on the government of P.W. Botha. A later version of the bill – a mixture of incentives and sanctions – was eventually passed by Congress despite the veto of President Ronald Reagan.

In a statement released Wednesday, the ruling African National Congress said Kennedy was particularly remembered for staging a protest outside Pollsmoor Prison where Nelson Mandela was being held at the time. According to the ANC, Mandela said years later that he knew of Kennedy’s presence outside his prison cell and that it “gave us a lot of strength and hope, and the feeling that we had millions behind us both in our struggle against apartheid but in our special situation in prison.”

The ANC said it “will forever treasure the contribution made by ‘Teddy’ in the struggle for liberation and the building of our democracy.”

We owe it to the memory of Sen. Edward Kennedy, and so many others, to honor their legacy and help build the future of South Africa. May he rest in peace.

Want to start a new trend. #SAis – We’re constantly told what South Africa isn’t. I think it’s time to tell the world what SA is. Thoughts?

Well, in true Twitter fashion, we all responded.  Pretty soon the #SAis hashtag (short for “South Africa is”) spread like wildfire, and it is really inspiring to read through the posts (you can click here to do a real-time search for Twitter updates with the #SAis hashtag).

The updates are predominantly positive, and I still find it amazing that all South Africans seem to feel exactly the same way about their country.  I pretty much nodded my head at every one of the updates.  It is a testament to the strength of the culture when there is such unity in our diversity.

I wanted to pull out and post some of my favorite #SAis updates.  Here they are:

But the best update, the one that sums it all up, comes from Simon Dingle himself, the guy who started this trend:

These days there is also no shortage of articles and blog posts by foreigners/expats returning home and loving it.  South Africa, fit for purpose? is one that caught my eye today.  Here’s an excerpt:

Look, South Africa can be edgy and you need to be vigilant. I’d say that rule of thumb applies to every single city in England on a Friday or Saturday night. Do you feel safe as the great weekend chunder-fest gets under way?

But let’s talk people. And in South Africa, you’ll find warmth and openness whereever you go. There’s difference, too, a sense of vitality and honesty that is refreshing. You feel alive here, aware of the great possibilties. It’s not perfect, there are kinks, dangers, but there’s an intoxicating buzz, too.

While you’re at it, you should really also read #SAis my home, a great blog post by an Irish immigrant to South Africa.  I love this part – an excerpt from the cover letter of his application for permanent residency:

I am especially excited by the new, more forward-looking approach that South Africans are adopting with which to view themselves, the country and the challenges that the country faces. South Africa is a country with great needs, but even greater potential.

While Aids, crime, poverty and unemployment remain significant challenges; they should be seen as potential catalysts for remarkable transformation. Either we choose to embrace South Africa with a positive, constructive and engaging spirit, or we choose to submit to pessimism, fear and misery. That’s it. Nothing complicated really.

What is the most prominent thought that underlines my desire to stay in South Africa? Not the lifestyle, not friends or family…. But the feeling that in this country, you really, really can make a difference.  South Africa is a country where I believe I can write my own story, make a difference and be noticed.

And as for me… After reading through much of today’s SA news, there wasn’t much more I could add to the conversation, except this:

Update on June 2nd: It looks like the trend is really taking off now, thanks to an excellent article in Business Day (Why your country needs you to sign up for a Twitter account) by Simon Barber.  Keep #SAis alive, people!

He then gets a little more serious.  He starts talking about racial tension and the political similarities between the 2 countries — still making a whole lot of sense along the way.  And then, completely out of the blue, Mr. Smith ends the article with this:

Yet there is one thing that South Africans have not mastered, and that is the relentless optimism of Americans about their country. Whether they would be well advised to do so is a question that will take time to resolve.

At first I thought I’d just let it go.  Move on, it was a pleasant read, just post it on Facebook and be done with it.  But now it’s festering, and 2 hours later I still can’t get over it, so I have to respond…

I think the mistake Mr. Smith makes is in equating criticism with pessimism.  This is similar to the mistake I believe some Republicans make in the US when they accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic.  Time Magazine recently did an excellent piece on patriotism which I highly recommend (The War Over Patriotism).  It lays out in detail the differences between patriotism as “a tribute to the past” vs. patriotism as “a key to the future.”  It’s a long argument that I won’t go into here, but I wanted to point to some key pieces in that article that talk about the role of criticism in patriotism (and I cut and paste shamelessly from different sections to make my point):

For liberals, America is less a common culture than a set of ideals about democracy, equality and the rule of law. American history is a chronicle of the distance between those ideals and reality. And American patriotism is the struggle to narrow the gap. Thus, patriotism isn’t about honoring and replicating the past; it’s about surpassing it.

Love of country requires both affirmation and criticism. It’s a good thing that Americans fly the flag on July 4. In a country as diverse as ours, patriotic symbols are a powerful balm. And if people stopped flying the flag every time the government did something they didn’t like, it would become an emblem not of national unity but of political division. On the other hand, waving a flag, like holding a Bible, is supposed to be a spur to action. When it becomes an end in itself, America needs people willing to follow in the footsteps of the prophets and remind us that complacent ritual can be the enemy of true devotion.

Patriotism should be proud but not blind, critical yet loving. And liberals and conservatives should agree that if patriotism entails no sacrifice, if it is all faith and no works, then something has gone wrong. The American who volunteers to fight in Iraq and the American who protests the war both express a truer patriotism than the American who treats it as a distant spectacle with no claim on his talents or conscience.

I know Mr. Smith wasn’t referring to patriotism in his article, but my point is this — don’t think that because there is so much negativity and criticism in South Africa at the moment, it means that we haven’t “mastered relentless optimism” about our country.  We criticize because we believe we can do better, we criticize because we know there is currently a huge distance between our ideals and reality, and we want to narrow that gap.  We aren’t pessimistic, we are getting involved in our future.

I just want to be clear, I completely agree that America is a country with that relentless optimism deeply ingrained.  But Mr. Smith, I’m going to respectfully disagree with you if you believe that we South Africans haven’t mastered that art.  Remember that every country was designed to make its citizens feel comfortable, not its visitors. So it may look like just a whole lot of pessimism to you, but we’re actually just talking about how to make things better because we are so relentlessly optimistic about what our country can be.

First, I want to say that there lives a unique dichotomy within those of us who were born and raised in South Africa.  Look, we get it.  We get that the crime rate is astronomical, the politics are corrupt, and things just tend to not work the way it “should” according to First World standards.  Yes, we get all that, but still we can’t emancipate ourselves from this flawed, breathtakingly beautiful country – and its open-hearted, ready-to-take-on-the-future people.  And then I read paragraphs like this one in the Newsweek article, and I just shake my head – not because the facts are wrong, but because it misses the point so completely:

The primary driver for emigration among all groups, but especially whites, who still retain the majority of South Africa’s wealth, is fear of crime. With more than 50 killings a day, South Africa has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world. The same goes for rape—ranking the country alongside conflict zones such as Sierra Leone, Colombia and Afghanistan. Future Fact polling indicates that more than 95 percent of those eager to leave South Africa rate violent crime as the single most important factor affecting their thinking.

Yes, it sounds scary – and the facts are disturbing.  But I’ve also recently seen a remarkable uprising of positivity in South Africa that I haven’t seen before.  I’m increasingly seeing a “good riddance” attitude towards those who leave the country loudly and for negative reasons.  A hope that all the complainers would leave already, so that those who would like to stay and build can get down to business without the distracting and annoying voices of the nay-sayers.  I still remember a high school teacher who once asked me, “Do you want to ride the wave of a place that has already accomplished everything, or be a part of building something that has huge unmet potential?”  I choose the latter.

I know what you’re thinking though – how can I be judgmental about this while I sit “safely” in another country.  Sure, point taken.  But I can say that my reasons for leaving had nothing to do with the crime rate or the politcal environment (Yep, I left to pursue a girl…).  And I can also say that we will move back, we will definitely move back, and that I’m using my time here to develop skills I can use to help build the future of South Africa.

Why do we plan to go back?  Because there’s no place like Africa.  Chaos and beauty exist so close to each other, often within the same place and the same moment, and it creates an energy that you just cannot describe.  Yes, it’s not for the faint-hearted, and the decision to live there, especially if you’ve lived somewhere else in the world for a while, is made for reasons that transcend the traditional Western values of consumerism and security.

You live in Africa because you can’t get it out of your blood.  You live there because you are placed there to make a difference.  You live there because you are compelled by the red earth and the redder sunsets to make a small contribution to the ongoing effort to save it from itself, to preserve both the chaos and the beauty so that it can co-exist in harmony.  And you do it not for yourself, but for your children, and for generations to come.  You live there because you believe that Africa is not the dark continent it is made out to be, that it cannot be written off, that it is too precious and too fragile and too robust, that the world is making a big mistake if it thinks African countries cannot be successful, peaceful democracies.

And so I’ve had several conversations with my country over the past few years.  We’re still fighting with each other, my country and I, not quite coming to an agreement about my future there.  But I’m ok with that for now.  Because I know Africa will never retreat, never stop talking, never condemn me for taking so long to come back.  Make no mistake — I know that Africa does not need me.  But I need it, desperately.  I need it to blow life into my calloused bones.  And I need it because I was born there.  I am an African.

And that is why I will return.