She Wouldn't Have Stayed Anyway

All the time we stayed in Australia, Claudia was firm on one thing. " I can't always stay here. My friends and family are all in Germany and I will want to go back there to live sometime." That never altered and I always respected that, -why wouldn't I? Like many Zimbabweans, my family and friends were scattered to the four corners of the earth and we had largely lost touch with each other as a result. In some deep corner of me there is envy for people who take for granted that the country where they were born should still be a place where they could not merely imagine to live, but more importantly, see a future. No-one with any experience of Africa seriously views a rosy future for themselves or potential off-spring. I had no country I called home, although being in Australia was the happiest and most comfortable that I had ever felt and I could easily imagine a happy and fulfilling future there. Claudia also missed other things about Germany. She knew that the average person had more disposable income over there, she hated the even length of days and nights near the tropics, prefering the long summer nights that Europe offered. (This was something that never occured to me, but then I was born north of the tropic of Cancer.) I think there would also have been an element in her that just missed a bit of 'German-ness" in her life. The cheeses, the breads (OK-breads especially,) and the language. Constantly translating in your head is a pain and you do welcome a time when you do not have to do any of that; when the news, the papers, the tv, casual conversation, the instructions on the packet etc, are all simply understood.

Claudia's relationship with her friends was odd. In the beginning, she missed everyone and I got the idea that she was very close to all of them. Indeed, in the first month she was with me, the phone bill was more than half a month's wages and the second month it was only a hundred dollars less. I never mentioned it to her until we were leaving years later and I found the bills while sorting through old paperwork. When she saw the bills she was appalled and perhaps a little ashamed. It was so important to me that she settle in, feel comfortable and minimise homesickness, that I would never have moaned at the time, -just subtly tried to steer her towards phone cards!