h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No, not clear, but becoming clearer. I thought you were a western girl who had found love on the eastern side in more ways than one.

i feel some sadness.

That would have been another possible interpretation, only i'm not sure that i would have come to see things this way, if i had been born western. Totally different upbringing and outlook. But not impossible i reckon.
What's the sadness about?

Not sure...something in the words...i always try to get into the mind behind the words

Yes, you perceived that right, there's a lot of sadness in that story.
As to the Easterner-Westerner contrast, i'm aware that it's a generalisation, i've met lots of people for instance in Ireland or SA or England, who would have to be classified as Easterners.

yes i have met a few myself. I once worked with a guy who was an east german border guard who jumped the wall back in 1967....very interesting....as you say...very differant way of seeing things sometimes too.

From my time in SA I gained an entirely different perspective on human beings and history. Had to revise so many things i had been so sure of before. All the neat black and white categories (pun intended ) dissolved into a sort of greyish mess.
Well as an East German i have a certain practice, once already my whole frame of reference has come crashing down round my ears, a process that still continues.

All part of lifes rich tapestry!!

If it has come crashing down then surely it must of been unstable to start with.....

Better to have it happen now while there is still plenty of time to rebuild and learn how to bend with the wind.

SA can be like that...a complete melting pot of culture and scenery...each bend down the road brings a different perspective...each bringing its own different factors to what is actually the same thing

Oh the thing was sturdy enough, which is characteristic of circular arguments.

hmm...i'd say

I say, how long you been in SA, have you been born there?

No i was born in London. In total i have spent about 19 years there.

That's a long time. Very long. How would you desribe the atmosphere in SA, the feeling in the air once one steps onto the tarmac from the plane?

It has changed considerably since i first arrived....however now i would say in one word....troubled!!!

\On the one hand i think it is the land of opportunity, on the other i think that sadly it is going to go through a lot of grief still!!

Some people say it's like a black invisible cloud charged with lightning enveloping the land, and that's just what i felt.

I'll take out the word black for fear of being labelled a racist which i am not, but certainly i can relate to that description. There is a lot of unfinished business in the country and i am not quite sure of where it is going!!

Oopsadaysie, i was using the adjective "black" in the sense of denoting the absence of light, nothing else. This just shows you how silly all that pc stuff is, or it would be silly, if it wasn't so dangerous, when a person can be branded for the utterance of a single word, however innocently intended. And if it wasn't for the hypocrisy of it all, as there clearly are groups who can be offended with impunity, aren't there?
Make it a dark cloud for goodness sake, or maybe a thunder cloud would be safer.
What really got my goat in SA were those middleaged fat functionaries from formally disadvantaged groups who thought it was my duty to leave the bar with them in order to make up for apartheid.
Looks like it was time for both of us to leave, what? But then i think of the caroo and the fever trees and the African moon, of the sillouette of the Drakensberg and of the air in August...

It is a sad state of affairs indeed....but very delicate, certainly for those that care!!

Yes, i can relate to your thoughts entirely about the african moon...the space...the trees, fauna and wildlife, the smiles of happy people putting cheer into the heart of anyone who was having a bad day....and then i think of those other attitudes that you mention!!!!....an unprecedented stuation i am sure?

There are astoundingly kind generous people in South Africa, and i treasure the idea of them as much as that of the landscape and air and sun. On the darker side, i often met with aforementioned demands, and once i came the nearest i ever have to being raped, in a scenario commemorative of the worst Tarzan movies, and of course my reluctance was construed to have racist grounds, as if it needed that, with an ugly bloated old toad like that guy was!
And there was also the continuous threat of those hyena people. That's the nearest equivalent in nature i can think of, and i know i'm wronging the hyena there, as hyenas don't have malice, only hunger, and they kill quickly.

Was it this incident that prompted you to leave?... it would not surprise me, i have seen the hyenas on various occasions at work....not raping but killing....the speed with which the lusting turns to frenzy is frightening...
I have also been the subject of an older but 'politically powerful' ladies attention and know exactly what you are talking about...apart from knowing of the type of guy that you are talking.

A silly question perhaps, but will you go back?, did Africa get under your skin as it has mine?

Well, no, that incident did not make me leave, just made me even more careful than usual. That guy only wanted to rape me, and as you say, that would be the easiest outcome by the standards of SA. And you know what, i don't even think they like sleeping with whites all that much, it's just one of these domination and compensation thingies.
No, it was growing paranoia inspired by the daily deeds of murder and torture, that did it. I noticed that i had taken on the habits of an animal in the woods, a rather small, timid, tasty critter at that. Felt uncomfortable in a place full of people unless standing with my back to a wall, panicked at the thought of sleeping in a room without a grid on the window, and am still a world class doorlocker. And i'll never walk the night as i did before, and that's just as well, maybe.
I might have stayed another 6 months or so, but my family was adamant, fairly adamant, that i should leave, and i'd had enough of seeing my mother crying each time i left.
But then, Natal was a rather bad place to be in anyway, and each time i came west, i did have second thoughts. I would go back some time for a visit.