Moving country remains the hugest thing we’ve ever experienced/ accomplished/ drowned in. It’s an act of seemingly utter insanity, which negates all one’s most primal connections to the cosmos. I find myself quoting Keats more often, ‘Happiness is sharpened by its antithetical elements’. Experiencing a new chapter of life is life-altering and isn’t given enough credence. Each day we are grateful to taste a figuratively different menu, yet simultaneously we miss the staple diet stemming from our roots. I recall emailing a psychologist colleague of mine a few months after my arrival here, “Am I experiencing a schism of the self?” I asked. She replied, “No, just re-inventing the self.” I kept that pinned on my notice board at work for the first year to reflect on. Scatterlings Synopsis The book kicks off with the author’s innocent and carefree childhood growing up on a farm in South Africa, my awakening (‘conscientising’ into an awareness that ‘all is not right’, being born into an apartheid era), life in SA and the epiphany to immigrate to NZ. The chapter ‘Bouncing off Planet Africa’ encompasses the grieving and healing process of migration. This section should be extremely beneficial to all migrants as part of the adaptation and acculturisaton process. The ‘Scatterling’ tapestry chapters follow with migrants’ stories of their passion, pain, love - and hate - of Africa. For this section a remarkable cross section of stories; people of various cultural backgrounds and groups from Southern Africa including: cross cultural marriages; gay marriages; the lobola story between a Zulu woman and an American man; people who were marginalised and affected by apartheid, or survived the war in Zimbabwe, etc, plus Afri-expat tales from places such as Peru, USA, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kenya, Zimbabwe, UK, Oz and NZ have been gathered and incorporated. There is a section with contributions, including a Somali Refu
