I Found My Heart In South Africa

There is something intensely spiritual about this place.

Previously I’ve had two moments when I felt what I would call a “spiritual surge”. One was when I was chasing a herd of giraffes in Niger and the other was when I was standing atop a sand dune in the desert in Qatar. At both times, it felt like the world just shut off for a moment and I was able to feel such intense joy at being alive. Here in South Africa, I feel that kind of a surge everyday and on a few occasions I have felt it so intensely that I have been brought to tears of joy.

And so, I have fallen in love with South Africa because it makes me appreciate every single day that I am alive. It lets me shut off the world and take time to just feel. To watch a cloud grow out of the ocean. To watch the sun set over the water and electrify the colours of the mountains. To hear the crashing of the waves along the shoreline. Imagine a place where everyday you can see something or experience something that makes you mutter under your breath, “God I love this place”.

Whether it’s climbing a mountain, sitting on a beach or walking around the lush Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, this place forces one into life altering contemplations. In Canada (and the West in general), our lives move so quickly and we often get so caught up in daily routines that we rush through life without really taking time to reflect upon what is important and the kind of people we want to be. We rush through our drive-thrus, plough through as many emails as we can on the internet, and send flurries of text messages on our cellphones, but we never stop and take it all in. In the West we focus on quantity and not on quality.

I have frequently found myself walking to Hout Bay Beach (a 5 minute walk from our house) and sitting in the dunes, staring out at the mountains and watching the waves crash gently against the shore. I sit and I stare and even if I have brought a book to read, I rarely ever get around to reading it because all I want to do is sit and take it all in. You’d think that living here in Cape Town for four months, I wouldn’t still be appreciating it all so much, but I do and I will miss it intensely when I leave. I think that perhaps a piece of my heart will always be in South Africa.