Counting Down...

Durban.. The little adventure that I set out to experience at the beginning of this year, has turned out to be a wonderful collage of memories for me. In the four months that I have been here, every day has been an opportunity to grow, to engage in the delight of a fascinating array of souls and persona's of a myriad colours. Needless to say, my imagination has been tantalised beyond fantasy, my experiences teased beyond expectation. And I have learnt a number of things. For example, it's one thing to visit a place as a tourist. As I have, often enough. And an entirely different thing to be a part of the fabric of a cities every day; mundane milk and bread shopping expeditions coupled with the inevitable familiarity that traversing the roads and lanes of a place tend to carry one beyond the rhetoric of being an outsider. It's almost easy to start feeling quite at home. Embraced by the familiar, the 'new' becomes posessed by you as you begin to belong. And the scope of adventure that calls ahead of time, from outside this new-place-called-home, starts to look like an anxiety-ridden game at escapism. Or perhaps not. We're all just travellers in life, passing through it's phases, stages and spatial realms; foreigners traversing unchartered territory in so many ways. For some part of the journey, we hope to take the good, and forgive the offish oddities, all the while remembering to thank the Divine order of things. But then, through all of this, determination insists that we follow that inner voice that has been guiding souls from the beginning of time. We cannot be anything but ever-appreciative of the glories that life presents before us, bearing in mind that it takes stopping to smell the roses, in order to really glimpse these treasures.

One month to go. Just about. June 30 marks the end of my stint at UKZN. Then, I leave. I refuse to say farewell, and prefer the french 'au revoir'. Until we meet again. Not quite yet though. One more month of Durban sunshine. Of waking up to the whisper of the ocean. Of traversing Ridge Road's undulations. Of cousin Fati's endless hugs. (And her countless creative ideas of why I should remain in Durban for the rest of the year, until she is ready to join me at Uni next year). Oh and another month of wonder. It's an easy cliche to say that there's a gazillion stars in the sky, and a few here on earth. But then, thats just it: there's just a few here on earth, and I met them here in Durban. And my life will never be the same again...

Durban, 2008, will remain indelibly etched in memory - a masterpiece that i will never succeed in painting, and will not venture to try. In adequate appreciation, words fail me.