When is not where it used to be

by James Khoete (Turkey)

I didn't expect to find South Africa

In July of 2018, nearly 3 years after living in Turkey, I went back home for the first time during the summer break to South Africa. I remember clearly sitting on my desk every evening in my tiny apartment and planning how to best make the most of the 37-days holidays that awaited me. I say summer holiday because while it snows in some parts of South Africa in July, folks are changing t-shirts twice a day in Adana, my host city, thanks to the heat. I finally made the trip and I was to spend a few days in Rustenburg, for no other reason than that it seemed an awfully nice place. Sun City, the breathtakingly awesome resort in Rustenburg where the famous movie Blended was shot, was my intended destination. It was no different from Adana in all honesty. For the most part, I could still move around in a T-shirt and a jersey tucked around my neck. Going back to my home after an absence of many years was a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. I expected to pick up from where everything was when I left to pursue my dream of studying abroad- how foolish of me to presume that. It was the smallest of things that irked me the most. Why should I have to sweat while making small purchases without cash? For one, getting cash began with a mental battle over which ATM machine would charge my foreign bank card less and I frowned upon the tuck shops that only had the “Cash only” sign at the entrance. I was stunned to discover, that I can’t enjoy the beautiful roads of South Africa anymore without having to constantly stop and pay a ridiculous amount of money at toll gates. Living abroad had also built a solid wall between me and the people I was once close to. I quickly realized how different our way of thinking had become, not just with my mother but almost everyone I talked to that summer break. I could hardly have felt more foreign if I had stood there dressed in sirwal (traditional Turkish garment for men). From religion to marriage to education to politics, it appeared that I was nearly always eccentric. All of this was a bombshell to me. Even though I was mostly happy in Turkey, I always answered the question of “What’s next after graduating?” with a resounding “It’s back to South Africa mate”. I never stopped seeing South Africa as home, in the fundamental sense of the term. It is where I come from, what I really understand, the base against which all else is measured but for whatever reason, it didn’t feel like the home I daydreamed about while in Turkey anymore. In the wake of these uninviting experiences, I wasn’t too sure how I’d answer this question when it rises again by the time I got back to Turkey.