{by Lisa-Jo from The Gypsy Mama}

There’s a moment right after passengers have been told to “put your seatbacks in the upright position, stow your tray tables and fasten your seatbelts” and before the landing gear comes down when my heart starts to race at the anticipation of being home again.

First comes the weather: hot, dry, sunshine. Then the visuals: sky – big, warm blue, streaked with light, white cloud. Veld – golden, dry and a haze of heat. Smells of dust, fires, taxis, and the cologne of a welcoming embrace. The sound of family all yelling at once as they spot us coming through customs, “Here, look, there they are! Guys, guys, over here! Run, run to them – it’s ok, go!” Bone-crushing hugs. Salty tears. Smiles. Big, white smiles buried in a brother’s little dark, black face, behind a dad’s graying beard, beneath a mom’s cobalt, blue eyes. So many smiles. I feel them in my toes. Delicious.

Hair gel, lots of hair gel still shaping another brother’s do. He runs his fingers through it as we stand and look at each other, grin, shuffle feet and renew.

Relationships have to be nurtured to survive. They require close contact to thrive. Long-distance is the antithesis to family ties. Each homecoming is a rebirth of an old relationship. It takes effort. It’s a commitment. It’s rewarded by two boys who feel themselves at home in a country they visit only once or so a year.

Screaming hugs and highways that arch and lurch exactly as I remember them. Dad’s driving that my brother still tries to correct. Hawkers who launch themselves at our car whenever the light turns red. A steep, steep driveway over a carpet of jacaranda petals that leads up to the house. And more hugs. And tea and koeksisters, melktert and rusks. Home is where people feed you what you’ve missed before you ask for it. Home is a small cottage that sits side-by-side next to my parents’ house. Home is an old dog and two raggedy cats long since passed on. But their memories, their memories launch themselves at me as we walk through the door. An old ox yoke hangs on the wall. Steps lead up and words unfold themselves above each stair, words I can repeat in my sleep from a thousand times climbing those stairs, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Family pictures line the walls. My name, my husband’s, proudly on the family tree, our sons – wait, one still must be added. Our family tree has grown since I was last home. Flowers, pots of flowers in the kitchen soaking in the sink. And in the lounge a kudu head inappropriately perfect for the room looks down on the scene of suitcases scattered about, clothes unfolding, gifts unpacked and exchanged. Shrieks of delight, of laughter, of joy, of the first fights between the littlest kids reunited. A red guitar for one a green guitar for another. Rockstars are born. Parents have misgivings about the gifts.

More food, supper. Pap ‘n wors, sauces, mushrooms, mealies, cauliflower, samp, salads – oh the salads – a riot of color and texture and taste. Prickly pears for dessert. My dad demonstrates how to cut them open and peel out the sweet and juicy fruit. A whole box of litchis for one friend. A carton of nectarines for me because my dad knows I don’t like peaches. Five Roses tea for some, Rooibos for others. Amarula for everyone.

The familiar, nightly chorus of frogs begins. You can easily forget how loud they are. They almost overpower the jasmine. Almost. Because nothing can outdo the rich, heavy jasmine in full bloom on a summer night in Pretoria. Nothing.

And on a first night back home all that is left to do is stare at the stars. Because as if all the rest isn’t enough, the stars for definite will reassure you that you’re back in the Southern Hemisphere.

{Originally Published on Gourmet Chick}

The best excuse ever to eat eye popping amounts of pork is to gather together 18 of your closest friends and book a whole pig at St. John Restaurant in Farringdon in London, England. You really do need to book the pig in advance. A deposit of £320 at least a week before your meal is required to reserve the pig which we affectionately began to refer to as Percy. Yes, Percy would die for our eating pleasure however where else but St. John’s to best appreciate and pay tribute to the life of the pig. The head chef at St. John Restaurant, Fergus Henderson, is the champion of the concept of ‘nose to tail’ eating. We could be sure that every part of the pig would be appreciated in all it’s glory and used and consumed right down to the last trotter.

For the privilege of eating a whole pig our group is allocated the private room at the front of the restaurant. Just around the corner from the Smithfield meat markets, the austere white washed walls of the restaurant and the waiters clad in butchers aprons are a nod to the area’s continuing carnivorous traditions. The bone marrow served with parsley salad is St John’s signature dish so I have no intention of passing up an opportunity to sample the bone marrow despite the lashings of pork that was to follow.

{Originally published on Thursday Drive}

I was in the middle of nowhere, but I felt as though I had arrived at someplace important and pivotal. A place that should show on some map of my life with the words Go here.

Heavy and golden, the moonlight sank to earth on a parachute of stars and brought everything around me out of the shadows – the hulking shapes of mountains, open space, a black ribbon of road. Far away, the light of one house.

I stood in the middle of a road in northwestern Montana, shivering with the wind that ran through me like a hundred ghosts. I had stopped to get out, to look. No other car would pass by while I stood there. The night was big. The world was big. How many times had the wind that filled my lungs traveled along the curve of the earth? I breathed in, sure it told me secrets of what my life could be, how big it could be, now that it was all mine again.

Back home in Connecticut, my job waited for me and my husband did not. Our separation was new, no older than a month. With less fuss than it took to plan our wedding, we decided to break apart the marriage, each of us taking uneven halves of the whole, pieces that had never quite fit together and always left a space between two people who tried.

I settled into a new place and then took every vacation day and every bit of cash I could, and I drove – this time, from Connecticut to the western side of Montana, 5000 miles in 12 days. It was the middle of September – now, almost to the date. This time every year, I give myself over to nostalgia for that trip and for the person I was then. Brave. Unafraid to go as far as that, alone, to see something beautiful, to be changed.

And despite the disappointment of a marriage that ended, I still thought I could see ahead and predict the future, or shape it.

The joke was on me, of course. On her, on the person I was that night, eight months before I would learn that I was pregnant with my first child. Whatever I thought was brave or scary before hitched a ride to somewhere far away.

But she learned. You want scary? I told her. Having a baby is scary. Cobbling together a life with another person, with a new life between you, takes guts. Believing that it will all work out? Harder still.

Originally posted at My Marrakesh:

It’s morning, and I am meeting my friend Benoit, a French interior designer.

We are meeting at Bab al Khemis, which means Thursday’s Door in Arabic. All around Marrakech’s old city, known as the medina, there are babs, or huge carved entryways. Each bab has its own name, and Bab al Khemis it is the entryway to the city’s equivalent of the flea market. Outside the bab, vendors are beginning to throng, displaying broken bits and bobs, as well as an occasional gem or two.

Benoit arrives, and we kiss, French-style, on both cheeks. For a number of years, Benoit designed interiors for the King of Morocco. Now he and his young family have moved to Marrakech and recently have bought a piece of land. Close friends of ours, Benoit and his charming wife Zoo, also a designer, are giving us a helping hand with our guest house interiors.

In T-shirts and cargo pants, we are ready for action. Today we are looking for antique doors and other architectural remnants that will help give our guest houses some character. We have brought along with
us one of Chris’s employees, Khalid, who can be counted on to negotiate in Moroccan dialect so fast that it makes your heads spin.

Originally published on Missives from Suburbia

Before we left for Egypt, more than one friend called it the “trip of a lifetime”. Between you and me, I smirked to myself just a bit, because I’ve been fortunate to travel to incredible places all over the world, and I’ve had many trips that I would classify as “trips of a lifetime”.

I’m not going to back down completely – I still think I’m a lucky, lucky girl when it comes to my travel experiences, and I’ve had many “once in a lifetime” experiences – but standing in the shadow of the Pyramid of Khufu, the only remaining member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, filled cynical little me with awe. Hubby and I kept repeating, “We’re at the pyramids. We’re at the pyramids.” It’s so surreal that we had to remind ourselves we were actually there.

Within minutes, we were climbing the pyramid’s external stairs, leaning and stepping on stones that were thousands and thousands of years old and worn smooth and shiny from the touch of countless hands and feet. Stooping and crawling, we scaled the interior passageway to the main chamber.

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