Johannesburg

Reflective mood at 04h10 on 18 February 2007 with Maputo dead ahead (and down) 37000 feet and 40 minutes to go to Johannesburg.
I go there now with mixed and conflicting emotions. It is the place of my birth, where my soul resides, a place I returned to after a lifetime away and have now left, abandoned, to pursue another dream, to flee the pain of the place, yet to return sporadically to breathe the reality of the place. The gritty, harsh dangerous beauty of Egoli, the City of Gold.
It was this exact week in 1997 that I first returned to Johannesburg having left aged 7. Today, 10 years almost to the exact day I return to breathe it again.
That visit in February 1997 resulted in the uprooting of a young, unstable family in June 1997, led by Mummy bearing little Megan and baby Jesse, barely 15 months old, all following a man set on returning to his “home” and leaving behind a certain level of chaos and uncertainty.
This little band of 4 people started to put roots down in Johannesburg and the rollercoaster of the next few years began.
Johannesburg will kill you unless you embrace it, examine it and attack it. I attacked it, with a vengeance. At every level. Business, social, (multilayered social, adulterous social, extreme social). I embraced the hedonism of the place at levels that will never be spoken about.
Our family grew – how could anyone of us ever forget the birth of Mr Jake?? – his entrance to the world still disturbs yet so appeals to the darker more dangerous side of my nature.
The adventures that Mummy and I had with various social groups as we got deeper and deeper in to it all.
The joy of a new lease of life working with the South African government for it all to be destroyed so callously by a group people who simply had to say “Let’s talk”.
The arrival of beautiful Wendy... the slow yet inexorable decay of my relationship with Mummy and hers with mine. The almost totally disasterous self destructive nature of that relationship. The giving up. The end of our relationship and the slow transition to the family unit held together by love and passion for being loved.
Yet the sheer determination to not stay down when told to stay down and the triumph of that sheer will. The purpose of self determination.
The hijackings, the muggings, the smash and grabs, the house breakings the petty theft, the daily tragedy of people dying around us.
I love Johannesburg – it made me the man that I am today, the father that I am and the friend that I am to Mummy, despite the loss of our relationship.
However, I will leave Johannesburg 12 days form now having had my hedonist senses "fixed" with it all and will be more than happy not to return again until circumstance puts me back in to the deep madness of this, one of the most dangerous citites in the world.
The Malaysian ailrines 747-400 has just started its descent in to the newly named OR Tambo International airport – I can feel my senses coming alive, my “Johannesburg radar” prickles and shakes off its dust, my gut tightens in anticipation, my body squares up to the potential dangers of one of the most dangerous, yet alive and vibrant cites in the word…..
Here I come, city of my birth, here I come!!!!