Six O'Clock Views

When Alan Paton chose the phrase "Ah but your land is beautiful" for the title of his book, I am guessing that he was not referring to the highveld in winter. But barring the flat dreariness of the urban Witwatersrand, he's not wrong, of course. South Africa has an exquisite and incredibly diverse natural beauty. And so it is with some surprise, therefore, that I find myself completely in awe of, and indeed dedicating an entire post to, the splendour of the New Zealand landscape.

I think this in part because I grew up mainly in the highveld, where my daily perambulations were accompanied by visions of grey grasses and flapping plastic bags along barbed-wire fences, or lampposts amply festooned with grisly billboard headlines. The beauty of South Africa was something I enjoyed almost exclusively on rare retreats to the sea or bush, or in my garden after I recklessly squandered gallons of precious water on it. Here, however, I live in a particularly pretty coastal village, and any trip to town or further afield takes me on an undulating journey through green hills peppered with pine and pohutukawa, and salted with sheep. And even in town, there are no billboards on lampposts, ever; there are generous swathes of vivid flowerbeds, daisy-studded grassy banks alongside neat walkways, and even the ugliest industrial areas have trees softening their edges.

I miss very much many of my native ways of life, the familiar accents, the aroma of boerewors, the acacia-silhouetted, cicada-chirping veld, inexpensive coffee shops, the ease and excellence of Woolworths (food) and Ackermans (children's clothes), our dark self-mocking SA humour, and the company and support of my family and friends. And I hate that things are so expensive here, and our earnings so much more meagre, relative to the cost of living, than they were in South Africa. And there are days - usually when I have laboured the entire morning over laundry only to discover a hidden cache of crumpled malodorous clothes under Maya's bed; there are days - often when I spend hours dusting and mopping and tidying only to have the resident trolls immediately flip order to anarchy the second they burst through the door - there are days when I wonder if we have done the right thing by uprooting ourselves so drastically halfway across the world.

The richness of our lives at the moment does not reside in the accumulation of a nice little nest egg; nor of the experience of exotic travels; and certainly not in the joy and cameraderie of a kuier with old friends. But often, when I feel particularly sour and lonely and down and destitute and broken, ruminating bitterly that I have been irrevocably impoverished by the move, it is then that I notice the blazing ruby and garnet sunsets, the emerald pastures, the diamond-sparkling, crystal-encrusted midday seascapes, the golden clarity of the light, the mother-of-pearl and silver beaches, the ocean all sapphire, turquoise, and jade. And in that moment I embody every cliché, because suddenly I feel obscenely
filthy

stinking

rrrrich.