Sylvia's Journal

I had the luxury of one full day to finish my trip reports (there were four different ones), sorting through six weeks of small pieces of paper to accompany my expense report and other tedious chores that kick in towards the end of a trip.

The staff had organized a small goodbye party, including three cakes and a speech, very touching.

I signed for the bumper scratches on my shiny red rental car and handed in the keys. It was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect 6 weeks. I was told that it was nothing. The insurance will pay. Still.

I made the rounds for goodbye hugs at 5 PM when the office empties. Driver Charles drove me back to the apartment where I dined on the last leftovers in the fridge: yogurt with muesli, a small chunk of cheese and a few small sate sticks while watching Private Benjamin, the only program I seem to be able to get on the complicated TV and dish arrangement (too late to learn now).

The suitcase is packed and the sleeping pills are handy for the 11 hour flight to Amsterdam and to Sietske. Goodbye to South Africa, for now.

I found my way to an informal Quaker worship group in Pretoria, not that far from where I live. It was at a private residence – the official Meeting House is in Johannesburg, some 55 km away. To avoid long drives every Sunday the Pretoria group meets at people’s homes every two weeks.

The house was lovely, old, with tin ceilings and old doors, the ones with the top and bottom part opening separately – a feature you find in old Dutch homes – so you can hang over the bottom and chat with your neighbor without opening you house. Unlike the area where I live, with its high walls, electric fencing and people inside being tightly shut out from the outside, where security companies making fortunes from fear, this house was in a neighborhood that appeared to be without fear: gates were missing or open, doors to the street were open, no electric wires nor placards posted in the grass on or in the walls that indicated which security company was in charge. It was in a place where one could imagine the existence of a community.

Inside was also neat. It was refreshing to be in a house without electronics, no sign of TVs, computers, iPads and such. There were two comfortable couches, a table made from a traditional African resting bed with several unmatched vases filled with garden flowers that were picked by kids I imagined.  It was a joyous and happy place.

I was warmly welcomed by a small group – maybe there were 15 in all, five of them kids. There were other visitors, a retired couple, from Concord Friends Meeting in New Hampshire, on a two year Peace Corps stint as teachers in a primary and secondary school in a village some distance away.

A young African woman, who accompanied her partner to the silent meeting from time to time, had noticed, as I had, that there were lots of grey hairs in the room. I also noticed quite a few Birkenstocks or look-alikes, very few painted toenails (mine and the hostess), and mostly white folks in comfortable and sensible rather than fashionable dress.

It was mostly a silent meeting and I liked it; not quite the feeling of weightlessness of yesterday in the salty spa pool, but a feeling of being in tune with the universe. A few people spoke but I didn’t get the messages the words behind the words and so I let them pass like riverboats coming into sight and then disappearing from sight, without a trace.

I commented on the excellent coffee we were served afterwards, with real speculaas cookies, and was promptly given a bag of coffee to take back to my apartment that doesn’t have coffee making equipment. I protested to no avail.

Two people had Dutch roots, one had left Friesland with her family when she was nine – going on a four week journey to the other part of the world in 1954. I told her I used to read books, when I was about that age, about kids emigrating and how jealous I was, living in the house and town of my grandparents, something I found very boring. One book I remember as if I read it yesterday, ‘the boot vertrekt zonder Claartje’ (the boat leaves without Clara) about a family moving to Canada.  The funny thing is that this 9 year old is now a very root-bound pensionada  (‘retired spare part’ she called herself) who hasn’t moved much since long ago while I, feeling so root-bound in my youth, are travelling around the world as if there is no tomorrow.

I slept terribly last night, from hour to hour, an interminable night. I gave up at 5 AM and watched the sun come up over the valley. The day was full of promises.

I worked for a while on my next assignment and then joined the well-heeled folks of Waterkloof Heights/Ridge for a latte at the little shopping center down the street. It was the perfect spot, in the warm fall sun, to review resumes for my co-facilitator in Bangladesh and meeting up for a final debrief with the project director. We talked about the project and when I would come back. I indicated that the project is first in line after the grandbaby is born and my grand-maternity leave has expired.

The afternoon was dedicated to a final soak and massage at the spa. It was twofer day and Katie and I got the ‘flotation therapy’ for free – a half hour in a kind of Dead Sea bath – a weightless float in a dark room – it was delicious and would have been totally relaxing if I hadn’t had to watch out for floating into Katie – suspended at the other side of the small round and shallow pool. I was thinking a lot about the grand-baby, being similarly suspended, in a much smaller space, making summersaults – I had an urge to do the same, feeling what that would be like.

We followed the flotation treatment with a Swedish massage which was followed by a sushi feast. It was good that Katie drove us back as my massage brain was hardly dependable, what with traffic going in the wrong direction

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I drove to the last day of my last assignment trying out a different route. I am getting quite comfortable driving with a stick shift on the wrong side of the road. I do still occasionally activate the windshield wipers when I want to indicate that I am turning left or right but I am mostly getting it right. Except for my backing out of the apartment’s parking lot – Jabu, who looks after the place was gesticulating frantically but the scrape with a brick wall had already left its mark on the red lacquer of my rental. It is one of the few ugly marks on an otherwise unblemished 6 weeks in Southern Africa.

And so I am basking in that feeling of having completed all assignments to the client’s satisfaction. The (re)treat is over – two intense days of learning and talking about things that are important for a team. In a way there was too much to absorb – the awareness of styles and how we would like to be approached when we get irritated about people not acting we would like them to act. It was a lot to absorb and will need a lot of reminding, supporting, and some gentle confronting.

The team made a commitment that it is up to the task and headed out into the weekend. But not before a bottle of champagne was popped open and there was much thanking and toasting and clinking of filled champagne glasses. At every twist and turn one is reminded of being in a wine-producing country.

I returned home exhausted, unpacked my facilitator bags and collapsed in front of the TV watching a famous South African soap opera, an episode with much sadness. From the previews I could tell that the next episode will star another emotion, anger.

I went out for dinner with two colleagues who had been in the (re)treat. We agreed we would not talk about the retreat, let is simmer for a bit.  We talked about the joy of flying in small planes, a hobby we shared, and that is popular in South Africa. I realized I haven’t flown since last November when Bill’s plane went into the shop for a makeover.

Today’s program consists of a talk with the chief about future work here, a half hour of ‘flotation therapy’ at the Soulstice Spa, followed by an hour massage, and finished off with a shushi dinner with friends.  Life’s good.

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I spent all of Human Rights Day, a holiday here, preparing for my last assignment, a teambuilding with the senior staff of one of our regional projects that is based here in South Africa. It is the crowning moment of 6 weeks of learning about the team, and doing a few other things on the side.

In the evening I was invited to a couple that likes to cook – and has a kitchen a whole lot more equipped than the one in my apartment. We were four of us, four different cultures: South African Indian, expat Indian, American and me Dutch American. I made for a wonderful meal and conversations that richoted from Romney, American politics, to the Seventh Day Adventists, and life in Durban. The dinner was a reward for a long day of hard work.

Today we had the first of our two days retreat. It was actually a treat rather than a retreat as we were pampered in a palace, hidden away on a small street, between trees and houses. It must at one point have been a large estate with the owners selling of pieces of land until the surrounding land and the building were no longer in the right proportion to each other.

The place is run by a woman of Dutch descent, her father came to South Africa during the second world war – an escape of sorts I imagine. And so we speak Dutch with each other. The staff is busy pampering us with everything we could possibly wish for – dainties for our tea and coffee breaks and for lunch a wonderful spread, including an enormous cold salmon, shrimp, pate, French cheeses, small chunks of lamb on rosemary sprigs and more.

There is a family of ducks that has the run of the place. Loud quacking they traverse the mahogany parquet in the central hall to get to their bath in the courtyard. After their bath they traipse back to the garden to resume their search for grubs. Their presence emphasize the lining up of ducks that the team has to do.

Today we were in the Louis XV (or XIV) part of the palace and dreamed about the project’s legacy after which we descended down to earth to look the team’s current situation straight into the eye – sobering at first. We looked at the gap between espoused theories and theories in use to see it is often wider than we think. We talked about Chris Argyris Model I and Model II – how bad we all want to subscribe to Model II but it is so difficult! Exercises that brought out the competitive element surprised some parts of self that were expected to be more altruistic.

All in all it was a heavy meal, the real meal but also the mental one, new concepts and frames to hold the current reality so that it can be made discussable – the learning of a new language with all the discomforts that come along with learning important things.

Tomorrow we move to the Chinese Imperial suite, a little further down the estate, between the first and the second swimming pool, hidden behind much shrubbery, as if it isn’t there. The walk down to the room feels like a walk into the Secret Garden.