Small stories from a big world

  Spring Day is celebrated in South Africa on the first of September. It is not a public holiday, but rather a bit like Valentine's Day. I did look forward to spring after so many months of winter. Spring in the south of the southern hemisphere is completely different from Europe. You get up one day and suddenly discover blossoms on trees everywhere and it seems like it is full summer only a week later. Sometimes. Colleagues in Pretoria and friends in Bloemfontein mentioned very hot days, and then freezing winter temperatures again. Those fluctuations are not abnormal. But here, in the south, where it never gets very cold even in winter, the grey coolness just lingered. Lots of wind, lots of rain. Then, all of a sudden, I saw that splash of colour appear. On the way to work: a tree with bright yellow blossoms and a bit later, the purple shade of the jacarandas as well. What is perhaps even more beautiful is the effect when that purple opulence begins to fall. A road or playground i...

  The east lights up in beautiful pastel shades. It is 6:30am. I have been on the road for an hour and in the meantime I have covered the route that thousands of athletes ran last week, from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. Respect. Meanwhile, it is completely light. I drive through rolling countryside. It is cold. A thick mist hangs in the valleys. The road is busy. Trucks and holidaymakers. This is a long weekend and the winter school holidays have started. Tomorrow is Youth Day. It commemorates the 1976 police massacre of SOWETO schoolchildren protesting against Afrikaans as the language of instruction. On the radio, I hear a report on the first session of parliament after the 29 May elections. For the first time since 1994, the ANC did not have an absolute majority. This caused a lot of unrest: how would a coalition be formed? But there will not be a coalition. The ANC invited all parties to form a government of national unity. The new parliament re-elected the incumbent president R...

I have a day off today as it is election day. I drink a cup of coffee. The table wobbles. The waiter looks for a solution. You don't have card board coasters here as in Belgium. On the fence across the street a banner of the Independent Election Commission. It indicates there is a polling station on the premises. I passed several of them during my walk here. At all of them, people were lining up. Outside I see some party posters, mostly from the Democratic Alliance (DA) ‘save South Africa’ and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) ‘land and jobs now! - stop loadshedding!’ It is unclear what the election result will be. In recent years, the share of the ANC -the majority party since the first democratic elections in 1994- systematically declined. Will that trend continue, and if so, how low will the ANC share fall? Is the new party, MK, with former president Zuma a serious threat? No idea. Among people I talk to about these elections, I feel some resignation (as in Belgium?): not know...

  Durban CBD and harbour at sunrise Basking myself in the warm glow of the sun's rays broken by an orange parasol. In front of me a glass of water. I am waiting for my lasagna. Behind me the buzz of a busy restaurant, half inside, half outside on the terrace and pavement. Across the street, the grass illuminates bright green in the sun. Here and there the dark shade of giant trees. This is Durban. The city I have been traversing for a week now in search of a suitable home. I realise that what I have seen so far is only a slice of this gigantic city, a carefully selected slice, where it is safe for me to move around. But what a place this is. How different from Kigali. Less well organised, less clean, less safe, for sure. But also much less sterile, much more vibrant and diverse. It is nice to be back in a place where people greet enthusiastically on the street or in the shop, where public space is alive and vibrant. Across the street, a family is having a picnic in the park. I ...

  I am holding the candle holder my godchild modelled and glazed. I reach behind me into a box full of wrapping material. A piece of tissue paper, then a sheet of bubble wrap. That’s it. Nicely wrapped. I place it in my trunk. Safe, for a long journey. It's that time again. I'm packing up my house. Well, it didn’t feel like my house anymore in recent weeks, as furniture disappeared, and curtains were taken down. The garden is already showing signs of neglect. I am moving out. Again. With the cups, plates, baskets, and books, I am also packing up my life in Rwanda. I see the densely populated hills, the rice in the valleys, the black and white stones at the edge of every road, the children running with me - shouting loudly "mzungu"- as I pass them on my bicycle. I muse on the eventful years I spent here: of COVID times, of austerity and other challenges. I think about the resilience and will of the people I work with, about how we worked together. How we conquere...

  Saturday afternoon. I have just come home from the fruit and vegetable shop. Two heavy shopping bags are strapped to my scooter. I untie the stretchers and drag them one by one to the front door. I unlock the door and kick off my shoes. Whew, now to carry the bags to the kitchen. I walk through the living room and see that Staf the Giraffe has fallen over. Staf is a South African giraffe made of iron wire and beads. Three of those giraffes stand in a row. Staf is the smallest and sometimes a bit unstable. He sometimes falls over when I bump into him. My brain registers it as I walk past it. Staff is on the floor. But he wasn't on the floor when I left. Did I bump into him on my way out? I enter the kitchen. There are two objects on the floor there. The first is a dish of cockroach poison that is otherwise neatly shoved under a rack. It now lies a meter from that spot. There is also a crocheted coaster on the floor. This one is normally lying on my coffee table, in the living ...