I flew to New York this weekend to surprise Natalie and her mom. New York City has always been an exotic destination for us South Africans. It’s a city we watch on television and in the movies, and many of us only dream of visiting. Things seem different though when you live an hour away and going to New York was like hopping on a Kulula flight to Durban, made so much easier now that I am permanently resident in Canada and not seen to be any kind of threat as I was when I used to enter the US on a South African Visa.
I arrived at Newark Airport in New Jersey and took the train into Penn Station, which is in downtown Manhattan. I SMS’d Doreen to let her know that I had arrived and she sent me the address of the restaurant where they were having brunch. Ive been fortunate enough to have visited New York enough times to know how to get around and which direction to go in. The surprise was such fun and well worth it. My biological family are scattered around the world and for various reasons we barely communicate, with each other so this family mean the world to me. I’ve been said to liken us to an episode of “Brother’s and Sister’s” and I say that with pride and affection. Watch any episode when you don’t have a big family and it’s all you want. The other day I was on the phone to one member that was SMS’ing another, had a Skype video call going at the same time to another and had Keith shouting in the background. We were all talking about the same thing, to each other! But I digress…
We spent most of Saturday wandering around Manhattan. Natalie and I got dressed later that evening and headed out to a bar in SoHo to meet an old school friend at a birthday party. We arrived early, had no idea whose birthday it actually was, lied ourselves into the private party and headed straight for the bar. A couple of vodkas later we joined the birthday group made up mostly of ex-South Africans now living in the Big Apple. Soon after that the Tequila made an appearance and at 3am I was outside looking for something to lick. Nats and I then made our way to Times Square and after unsuccessfully licking a NYPD cop car (visit We Lick Anything on Facebook for an explanation) we met up with the ex-South Africans again at a diner uptown and had an early breakfast.
I realized something that night. I could never understand why South Africans that emigrated actively seek out other South Africans, forming little South African communities all over the world. I always said that if I left, I would avoid that and integrate myself into the community that I had chosen to emigrate to. But four months into my own emigration I realize now how familiar and safe that group of fellow South Africans feel, the common bond is immediate, the accents are comforting and there are no questions or explanations of why we are here and who we are. I get it. We are human beings that like to seek out the same.
P.S. Read “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”. What an amazing book.
I arrived at Newark Airport in New Jersey and took the train into Penn Station, which is in downtown Manhattan. I SMS’d Doreen to let her know that I had arrived and she sent me the address of the restaurant where they were having brunch. Ive been fortunate enough to have visited New York enough times to know how to get around and which direction to go in. The surprise was such fun and well worth it. My biological family are scattered around the world and for various reasons we barely communicate, with each other so this family mean the world to me. I’ve been said to liken us to an episode of “Brother’s and Sister’s” and I say that with pride and affection. Watch any episode when you don’t have a big family and it’s all you want. The other day I was on the phone to one member that was SMS’ing another, had a Skype video call going at the same time to another and had Keith shouting in the background. We were all talking about the same thing, to each other! But I digress…
We spent most of Saturday wandering around Manhattan. Natalie and I got dressed later that evening and headed out to a bar in SoHo to meet an old school friend at a birthday party. We arrived early, had no idea whose birthday it actually was, lied ourselves into the private party and headed straight for the bar. A couple of vodkas later we joined the birthday group made up mostly of ex-South Africans now living in the Big Apple. Soon after that the Tequila made an appearance and at 3am I was outside looking for something to lick. Nats and I then made our way to Times Square and after unsuccessfully licking a NYPD cop car (visit We Lick Anything on Facebook for an explanation) we met up with the ex-South Africans again at a diner uptown and had an early breakfast.
I realized something that night. I could never understand why South Africans that emigrated actively seek out other South Africans, forming little South African communities all over the world. I always said that if I left, I would avoid that and integrate myself into the community that I had chosen to emigrate to. But four months into my own emigration I realize now how familiar and safe that group of fellow South Africans feel, the common bond is immediate, the accents are comforting and there are no questions or explanations of why we are here and who we are. I get it. We are human beings that like to seek out the same.
P.S. Read “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”. What an amazing book.
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