I’ve always found difficult travelling back home to the semi-rural out-skirts of Rustenburg, leaving the city with its potent pollution, pressurizing environment but electrifying atmosphere. Thus with my momentary detachment and short visits, I have settled on a consciousness that my home is neither the city nor the conditioned location that I come from but rather the road of emotions that connect the two.
Back home things are pretty simple and basic, you work to survive, you cook so that you must eat, and you wake up so you can work in order to feed your family. Monday to Saturday and sometimes (when times are hard) on sanctified Sundays, no rocket science in that equation. For a majority of the families and neighbors, their circumstances don’t afford them the privilege of chasing dreams or that of exploring an un-known part of the country, be it for leisure or labor. One cannot enjoy the cool and calmness of a pool when trying to keep their heads above water. I have three siblings, a tripod balanced by blood, two intelligent sisters and a hard working mother. That is where the anchor of my life rests and if it were crammed in a book, it would be titled, “love, food, family” and perhaps it would generate a huge interest and even become a motion picture. Dreams keep us alive, they provide hope and even shape our way of thinking and as a child, who supplements on dreams, I only wish that I may provide my siblings with an opportunity to live their dreams, most especially my mother – but that is another story for another for another article.
Life in the city (or life in the capital city, to be more precise) is challenging, exciting on a minimal scale, when times are hard and forces are working against you or when one struggles to break-even, you wish you were never here until you experience an auspicious week and then the streets are paved with smiles (something seldom seen). Whatever our experiences may be in the metropolis, it retains one status, that it is the place that fuels our dreams and this machine is oiled by the ever flowing generation of urbanites and many more who seek a life out of the ordinary. Hence I and other dwellers are here.
Bob Marley once sang “in this great future, you can’t forget your past”, so I leave home with the knowledge and trails of memories of who I was before what I am becoming and Saul Williams wrote in his poem “I am the streets, the white lines separate me from me” so whether one lane describes me returning and another lane describes me departing, I remain a constant traveler. The only thing that changes is my direction.
