2. Understanding me

In just a few months, I am taking a trip to South Africa with as many of my immediate family as could go. For me, it is an important trip unlike any other I have taken back to South Africa.

South Africa is home to me. It is not home in the sense that I live there or I am going to live there. It is home because it is ingrained in me. The culture is still mine and even my thinking remains staunchly South African.

This is hard to explain. How can I be something on the inside though I have not lived there in several decades? It is because I have a worldview that was shaped and which remains a heavy influence in the way that I think and sometimes even behave.

For this reason, I wanted to take as many of my family as I could to South Africa so that they could experience what I talk about and what I am. My extended family in South Africa are becoming fewer and fewer. All of my Aunts and Uncles are gone. All I have left are cousins that I have little connection to and who do not really know me.

My children and grandchildren, much as I hate this thought, are American. They do not think like South Africans. They do not understand my worldview. There is nothing wrong with this fact; it just is. At the same time, I want to share who I am with them.

They would no doubt argue this blog with me. They believe they know and understand my South Africa. And they do to some degree. But they can never fully understand. I grew up there, spoke a different language during those formative years, went to school in that system, and was raised in a completely different environment. For that reason, my thinking is different at the most basic level.

This is why I want them to go with me and experience South Africa differently. I have taken a few trips back with some of my children, but those were different occasions and they are now grown with their own families. I believe they will see things differently on this trip. Others who are going have never been and can only guess about what it is like. For them this will be a real education which I am already relishing.

We will not be able to see everything and experience all that I would want them to experience. I have picked a few highlights and planned it accordingly. We will visit my hometown, Kruger National Park, Durban and its wonders, and Cape Town and the surrounding area. It will be a lightning trip despite the fact that with will be gone for three weeks. It is as much as we could afford in several ways from cost to time away from work and school.

I wish I could pass along my South African blood and heritage. I get that I cannot, but at least these folks will have a better understanding of what makes me tick.