A new home

Seeing as how it is Friday and I am not in the mood to think, let me tell you how an Argentinean girl ended up in the wilderness of South Africa. That’s me, in case you haven’t clicked!

Back in the Dark Ages, 1989 to be exact, faced with a declining economy and no job prospects for my father, we were in dire straits as he was the only bread winner in our family then. That’s until an ad appeared in the classifieds for a job overseas. My dad didn’t have a clue where in the world this job would lead us to, but he decided to go for the interview anyway. The job was in Johannesburg, South Africa.

He got the job, with promises of a car, house and all the trimmings. So he went first to get everything settled before my mom, my two brothers and I joined him. When he arrived in SA, to his dismay he found out that the company where he was supposed to work, had been sold. He still got the job, but had no house, no car, nothing. Thank goodness we didn’t travel with him. So while he took the time to get everything ready for us to arrive, we struggled back in Argentina to make ends meet. Six months later, 8 August 1989, we finally made our way to South Africa. It was my first trip on an aeroplane so it was quite an adventure for me, which included a stop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as well as Cape Town. I was so excited and thinking, naively like most foreigners do, that I was going to live in a jungle, surrounded by wild animals. You can imagine my surprise when I saw that Johannesburg was a city like any other!

I was worried about having to communicate in a new language with the people here. Back home I took some part-time lessons in English but it was not sufficient to defend myself here. But being nine years old, eager to learn new languages, it wasn’t a problem for me to learn the lingo.

It’s been 16 years now since we arrived in SA, and since then I have only returned twice to Argentina. I miss it dearly, my relatives, my friends, the FOOD! It has been difficult to adjust to South African life but I think I have gotten the hang of it by now. While I miss my home country, South Africa is now my home and I am here to stay.