Ambivalence. What's Good Is Bad

As ONE of those seriously unresolved South Africans who longs for “home”, I always promised myself that by the time I’d been in Australia half my life, I would know what I was doing.

- Anne Susskind

I’d commit. Having reached that point, I haven’t exactly done so, but a combination of inertia, real estate and an appreciation of the mundane, among others, keeps us here. Mostly, though it’s because my teenage son is an Aussie who deeply loves his school, home, street and suburb and cares about his football club.

What’s it like? For me, it’s a statement of the obvious: it’s great, if innocuous. I’m lucky, I live with my front door unlocked, my teenager can walk around relatively confidently, I don’t clutch my handbag at all times (though I lose more things out of it than when in Cape Town where I hold on tight) and we don’t get approached by hungry people in the parking lot when shopping for our expensive organic food.

But what’s good is bad: life here lacks edge and interest. It’s like a bubble, especially in the eastern suburbs of Sydney where I live – as do many other South Africans. You won’t find us out in the sticks among the bogans – def: “an uncouth or unsophisticated person”; example: “Some bogans yelled at us from their cars”.