Hello again everyone!
I hope that lockdown is still treating you well.
For my post today, I thought I would sort of steer away from the “Prepping for University” path and focus on something a bit more personal to me and something that I feel a lot of people can maybe relate to.
At a young age, my family and I moved all the way from Pretoria, South Africa to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I think in many ways I was too young to understand such a big move. The biggest change that I registered at that point was the weather. The humidity in Dubai was something that I had never experienced before, as South Africa isn’t really known as a humid country.
As time went on, I noticed that the language barrier was definitely a challenge that I would have to overcome. I often found myself still saying words in Afrikaans, thinking that my English speaking peers would automatically know what I was referring to. I had to actively keep up with the change of only speaking Afrikaans at home, and only speaking English at school. The real challenge came when I had to start learning French and Arabic as part of the school curriculum. I had barely learnt proper English and now I had to learn two additional languages. I think you can imagine what a little girl, with a heavy South African accent, sounded like trying to pronounce words in French and Arabic 😅. Definitely not a pretty sight.
Over time, a lot of things kind of started to weigh on me. I was raised to love and appreciate nature, and even though Dubai does have some nature-y places, it’s not really up to par with the nature in South Africa. I started to miss the beautiful blue skies, the smell of everyone cutting their grass on a Saturday morning and I even started to miss the Hadeda birds that you could hear every morning after waking up, even though they are known to annoy a lot of South Africans 😂. My parents told my brother and I that we would be returning to South Africa at least once a year, specifically during our schools’ summer vacation. I knew that these vacations would be my time to really soak up what South Africa really had to offer and to appreciate the things that I went the majority of the year without. During these vacations, my love really started to grow for Cape Town and the Kruger National Park.
Among other things, South Africa’s unique food was also something that I missed dearly. Luckily, there are a bunch of South African cuisine orientated stores, so when we started to miss South Africa, we could just go and buy some biltong and a couple of BarOne chocolates to ease over those moments of sadness. Music really helped a lot when it came to homesickness and it also served as a common interest between my family in South Africa and my family here in Dubai. Naturally, after having spent some time away from our distant family, some common interests were lost along the way and sometimes it felt like we were strangers in some aspects. Our culture, including our food and our music, definitely helped to bring us closer and essentially created a bridge between my family and I.
Growing up in Dubai did provide me with some amazing opportunities though. I learnt to appreciate and see the beauty in a lot of different cultures and religions. The United Arab Emirates is such a diverse country, and I went to a high school where we had at least 80 different nationalities. Throughout the years, I learnt that no matter where another person was from, that I could in some way find common ground with them, even if it was just over the fact that we were both homesick. I came to appreciate the fact that humans really aren’t that different from each other. We all become homesick at some point or another, we all have a national dish that we swear is the best dish on earth and we are all looking for a place that we can call home.
To be completely honest, I don’t really know where my home is. I don’t know if I can call South Africa my home, seeing as I haven’t been living there in years and I honestly don’t know if I can call Dubai my home, seeing as I wasn’t born here. Over the past two years, I have started to feel more and more like the UK is my home. The UK reminds me so much of South Africa, from the nature, to some of the similarities in our cuisines, to the fact that there is probably a biltong store close by and that you just have to search for it.
Even though it was hard to go through such a big move, I honestly don’t think that I would change anything if I had the choice to. Growing up outside of South Africa has shown me its beauty and has made me appreciate our culture even more than I think I would have if we had stayed in South Africa. It has made me appreciate the times that I get to see my distant family, seeing as those moments are often few and far between and it has given me an appreciation for different cultures.
I hope that some of you can relate to this post and that it can show some of you that although it may seem scary to leave your home countries to come to the University, I promise that it can really be an amazing experience. Leaving your comfort zone can often give you your fondest memories and provide you with experiences and opportunities that can take you wherever you want to go in life. You just have to take a leap of faith and trust that you will be alright, especially since there is a biltong store not too far away from the University 😋.
Stay safe and enjoy your week!
