Home is where the heart is, but what if your heart is not where you are at the moment?
Easter weekend is when families decide to brave the roads and go on vacation and this year it was no different. I myself had the privilege to take a trip and fly down to Cape Town with my better half and left Buddy at home to look after things although I must say he was cheating on his diet, he basically came rolling to greet me when I returned. There was a considerate distance between us and I missed his chubby face and knew that Cape Town would be ideal for us. Thing is, the distance between us and home was considerable, but still my heart felt content with my surroundings.
I have this theory that the Western Cape is not actually part of South Africa but that you go through this magical barrier that transports you to a place full of everything that my home is not. Sounds harsh but the facts outweigh the feelings. We touched down at Cape Town International Airport and within 10 minutes a sense of calm overwhelmed me from head to toe. Then disaster struck. Our rental car was never fully booked and we were stranded without transport so we decided to do what a tourist would do: Uber. It was the start of something beautiful.
From our hotel we decided to walk to most of the places and then we were introduced to something most people in SA find very uncommon: public transportation. We were riding the bus pretty much everywhere and not once did we feel unsafe. Not once did something break or arrive late. Not once did we regret not having a car.
My point in all of this is that it took us experiencing a city, no, a community that was clean, friendly and efficient for us to realise that our hearts don’t always have to be with us to feel like they belong and all of that is because the people there feel proud of their city and the municipality feels proud to make their citizens happy with service delivery and never feeling it is a chore or “unnecessary”. We have been feeling the brunt of laziness and people who do not know how to handle their city and all we want is to feel proud and welcome in our own city.
That is what all our hearts desire at the end of the day, isn’t it?
