Opportunity Cost

The value of what is given up when a decision is made.

Voting at the South African Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.

The train ride from Zurich to Bern was full of saturated greens and clear blues, fields covered in wildflowers, glistening lakes and distant mountains. In Bern I walk to the South African embassy from the train station. It is a perfect late spring day, bright sunshine and a refreshing breeze. It smells fresh, feels alive with possibilities. I walk over a bridge and watch the Aare river flowing, a glittering turquoise, and I think, “this is a beautiful country.” I reach the embassy and see very few people, and although there was a gazebo under which an entrepreneurial family had set up shop to sell boerewors and Savannah and other South African products, there was also a subdued atmosphere about the place. A few jokes and smiles because that is the South African way, but as I looked into the faces of the people in the line I also saw sadness. Perhaps I am projecting, but I walked away with a heavier heart than I arrived with.

I am asked a lot when meeting people why I moved to Switzerland, I still haven't found a way to answer that isn't completely superficial or too serious. On some days, it sounds to my over sensitive heart as if people are asking me why I don't want to live in South Africa. I see the answer on the faces of the other South Africans in line to vote, almost aggressive. Of course I want to! Of course I want to live in the country that shaped me, the cultures I come from. Of course I want to live close to my family… of course, but…
I don’t want the violent crime. I don’t want the struggling economy. I don’t want…
The choice seems unfair sometimes, so profoundly difficult. Many things in life are unfair though.This specific topic has so much nuance and layered feelings and internal conflict. There is guilt for even having a choice when so many don’t, guilt for choosing to leave, guilt for struggling to find a place in a country with so many opportunities. In the end though, I am here because I chose to be here. Which means I want to be here. Doesn’t it?
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
It means both. The older I get, the more these lines by Walt Whitman resonate with me. The contradiction of being alive, being human. I don’t have to have a justification for everything. Some things simply are.

And yet, I have so much agency in so many aspects of my life. Some things simply are, that is ok. Most things, though, are shaped by our perception. A big part of finding contentment here in Switzerland is the process of owning our choices. A big part of owning our choices is acknowledging that when we chose this, we did not choose that. There is a cost. Looking at that cost instead of plastering superficial positivity and intellectual justifications over the gaping hole is part of finding joy here. Living and living well with my choice means honesty with myself. Yes, we choose to live here, we admit that without handing over responsibility or wallowing in self-pity. That is the truth. This is the truth too, we pay with a piece of our heart.

I pay when my friend, heart of my heart, has a baby and all I want to do is bring her a meal, hold her daughter, look into her shining eyes. “She is perfect.” I type, my eyes spilling over. I pay, with the sense of loss in knowing I will miss years in between my visits. Miss babies becoming toddlers, toddlers becoming children. I pay with the knowledge that my parents will grow old without me to witness their days. Without my children. I pay in missed weddings and virtually shared grief. I pay in memories never made and dreams never realised. I pay in imposter syndrome. I pay in the cultural misunderstandings with my neighbor, in the feeling of being other but not knowing how to fix it. I pay when the world around me flows endlessly in a language that is not my mother tongue and I feel parts of me disappear. I pay in the grey depths of winter when I could weep for the feel of the sun on my skin. I pay as the hills and low sky close in on me and all I want is a broad horizon and a wide heaven so that I can breathe.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. God Bless Africa. The title and first line of the South African National Anthem. I think of the faces of the people in the short line, waiting to vote in Bern. Yes, I saw sorrow. I also saw that resilience, that zest for life. These people will find their place, shape their future. They are a part of South Africa, are they not? They bring their country into this one, blessing it. As do I. I remind myself of this often lately. I can take up space here, push back at the organised Swiss world. Add otherness. I think of the sounds that I miss. The sass of Afrikaans on the lips of a Coloured, the musical fullness of IsiZulu, the way Natal English can sound simultaneously flat and round. How a name can be a sentence, spoken to the ancestors. I think of the landscape: a country where two oceans meet, where mountains and desert and lush coastlines are calling for exploration. I think of the storms rolling over the Drakensberg into the lowlands like a blessing, frightening in their power, smelling like hope and awe. All of this wildness and power has shaped me too.

There is a photo of me around age thirteen with some friends. Six in total. Of those six one was Hindu, another Muslim, one came from a family that worship their ancestors and another from a family that was fairly agnostic. I am a christian. We didn't think about it too much. It simply was. Otherness exists. In your friends and your crushes. In the way that your neighbours might sacrifice a goat at their next celebration and that the Muslim boys leave school early on Fridays for Mosque. It is in the sweet meats that your friend brings during Diwali and in the way you know the fear your teammate has for snakes has a supernatural depth. People that you interact with can be vastly different to you. So can people you love.

Music taste and skin colour and traditional clothing style and food. I was surrounded by the aliveness that comes with diversity.
I think of the tradition of hospitality that permeates South Africa and the concept of Ubuntu- I am because we are. I think of resilience and a sense of the ridiculous. I think of the way my children dance to a strange mixture of styles that include deep house, choir music, Afrikaans hits and amapiano. I think of the saying “ ‘n boer maak a plan”, the inventive and determined way South Africans approach problems; a plan will be made, a solution found. I think of the history in my blood. I come from adventurers and pioneers. From people who have worked hard and served well. I come from farmers and nurses. I come from a home where an extra face is always welcome.

I take all this. This heartache and this heritage. This richness. I let it flow into my life here, mixing in. Creating something more than the sum of its parts.

There is a sense of finality in my heart as I write this. As if I might not post about South Africa again. As if I have moved somewhere beyond the name of a Nation. This is a post about South Africa, yes. It is a post about moving countries. It is also a post about growing up. A post about Home. Moving from Home that was to Home that is. All humans do it to some extent as they move through life. We all contain multitudes and struggle with the tension. And so, I end with a question, to myself, to you. How can we live fully…here…in this Home, this life?