Expected Home
December 2022
It’s about that time of the year again, when lemming like, the migrant workers of the holy land stream back to their home villages. And for migrant workers, let’s say we mean everyone who has to leave their birth or home village to go off and earn their daily bread in another village, usually in another province. Now if you are used to being referred to as something much more posh than a migrant worker due to your economic class and security clearance privileges, then, shame for you. Migrant worker is simpler, like you should aim to be, posh one.
Now your home and village might be a sprawling Apartheid era township; a couple of huts near a great fig tree or a Cape cod magazine-feature type of house overlooking the sea. It matters little; in the holy land, come December, you’re expected at home. You could be a jet-setting multi-award winning author, a clerk in a bank, a mine worker or the tannie that makes the roosterkoek at the farm stall. It matters little, in the holy land, come December, you’re expected at home.
The thing about being expected home is that home is always calling. It never stops calling. It might be that work does not allow you the privilege to get home for Christmas and you will get an extra few days off in January but you can be rest assured that you’ll never be able to live down the ‘why didn’t you come home’ questions the very next time you do make it home. Then there’s the fact that not making it home even just once will be remembered forever. In fact, not making it home is truly testing the G-ds because it will be the reason given, should you fail at any point and need a place to retreat to and recover. You’ll go home. Only to be told that now you’re not too busy to come home and again, you’ll be reminded about that one time or the several times you did not make it home for December.
Of course, if you’re a pale (and/or properly wealthy but mostly it’s and and not and or) holy lander, going home is slightly different — it probably involves flying off to somewhere else in the world to join family who are also flying in from everywhere else in the world. A little more cost intensive than going home for the average local in the holy land, although in proportion to income, the cost is considerably less. Locals are accustomed to taking a few taxis trips, a couple of bags, sleeping upright in cramped seats, spending hours in queues, hasty pit stops on the roadside and bearing with fortitude the weight of the sheer disdain from the road users sitting in their private cars. Still, despite the huge costs, the privations of public transport and the terror of being on the roads in the holy land during peak holiday season; hundreds of thousands of regular folk in the holy land make the trip home. Because it’s December, and it’s what is expected of us. That is all the reason we need to brave the trauma of the trip, and sometimes the trauma of being home itself. But that’s a blog for the new year.
For this year, let us take a moment to consider that we have come this far. It’s mid-December and we’re in the traditional 12 days of Christmas. The little ones have been let off their leashes and the confinement of their 12 years of modelling into perfect little consumers. The work scene is slowly unravelling into a more relaxed state; except for the hospitality people who are all saying grace every time they score a 20% tip. Holiday villages are preparing for the influx of Frikkie and his ilk racing around at top speed in their white dubbel-kajuits. The very air is crackling with the anticipation of a period of rest, a break and some comfort from what has been a long year.
But it has not just been a long 2022 AD; it’s been a long haul from the suddenness of the global and national lockdowns of March 2020. It’s been a long three years. It’s been a long journey to process and even just accept so much has happened, so many have died, and that we ourselves are changed. Irrevocably changed. Some of us for the better, some of us for the worse. All of us properly schooled in the sheer fragility of our collective existence and the beliefs about our very existence. The effects of the past three years have only started to manifest. Our ability to sit comfortably with and face our own fears and traumas that the immediate past has sharpened, is only emerging. As humans, we are only emerging from the experiences of the past three years.
While we might be mooching around the holy land without masks and sanitiser is no longer such a hot commodity that Kyle and his friends are selling it out of their garages; the reality is that we remain on alert. We know this freedom we enjoy can be curtailed at any time for reasons far beyond our control and that of our chonky buffalo farmer president. We have seen much that has changed in how we see ourselves, each other and the world around us. For some this change has been a growing, an opening up of the mind, heart and being. For others, it has been a retreat into the laager of their prejudices, bigotry, fear, traumas, hate and general ugliness.
This translates into greater unity in some spaces, in some homes, in some businesses, in some social settings, in and amongst some people. It also means greater division, greater apartness and greater hate for some people. While many of us would wish that everyone in the holy land had grown towards the light instead of away from it, we can be grateful that there has been growth and the past three years have brought more people closer together — as people. Closer together in spite of their differences and this can only be a win for all of us in the holy land.
This season, as you head to your physical, ancestral and other homes; consider that you can carry with you light or dark as you journey. That you can bring relief or pain with your presence, your words and deeds. That you can manifest unity and the universal message of bringing closer those who are apart. That you can choose your words; not just mindlessly repeat what has been forwarded many times in the WhatsApp group and what Pa said 50 years ago when he was still bo-baas. That you can choose to quietly and powerfully bring a calming gentleness to the spaces and people you inhabit. That you can manifest all the kindness, peace, joy, understanding and love that a baby born in a manger in an occupied city in (another) holy land could ever do.
Don’t forget, you’re expected home; it would be wonderful to arrive bearing unexpected gifts.
Expected Home is about the great expectations of being alive, being present and being human in the holy land and beyond.
A huge thank you to every single one of you that has read these little stoep stories since I got back to writing full-time around March 2020. It’s been and remains a learning and humbling journey. Your support, likes, shares and feedback have enriched this journey immeasurably. I remain grateful for your company on this trip.
© Jesh Baker, 2022 for Oppi Stoep
