Goodbye (Finally)

seated in a horrid wheelchair, begging for a living,
with the odds against her, yet full of life and joy
... and a great sense of humour.

A place called home

Sitting in the Jo’burg to Tana airplane I try to process the loss of one of my dearest and Maddest friends, and his request of a final blog post … How can I write a final Madder-in-Mada post, and “lose” a friend without oozing sentimental junk?! This post is doomed from the start!

You have read some of my stories, seen some of the kids in my life, and posted sweet and hilarious comments via Rob’s blog – thanks. So, for the final scribble, a bit more about my home …

Sitting in the plane I find myself recognising the mud-brown rivers and the red contours of the land, and a passage from The Poisonwood Bible comes to mind: Africa is a disease. Once it enters your bloodstream you will never be free from it. It lives and breathes in you, has its hold on you, and you will be both one with it and apart from it and unable to completely separate yourself from it. This is Madagascar to me! 

I arrive home to the potholed streets and cacophony of karaoke, trucks and chatter filling the polluted air; to white puffy clouds that colour a blue sky – backdrop to the city of a thousand church steeples. I am greeted with foreign phrases in a musically-pitched language, and the recipient of cheerful grins from kids wearing threadbare hand-me-downs and mud marks on their faces. I avoid the roadside food stalls, following advice from Rob and the Midgleys in trying to avoid yet another tropical disease, but order pizza-of-a-different-kind from the only reliable fast-food delivery company. 

Then I sit back and sigh – the pleasant type of sigh that goes right into your gut and fills your heart with a fuzzy feeling of well-being. Who would have thought that this land would become home – a place with its own bitter-sweet joy … and its own hold on my heart? Yet, it is exactly that … a place that I wish I could share with the world.

So long then, dear Madder in Mada. And thank you for sharing my home with everyone who took the time to read about it.

The city with more church steeples than liquor stores ...

Two children and a mielie (sitting in a narrow alley-way between two houses)

Bad hairday

Now that's scary: Fresh Taste. Trendy Girls

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