Well, I for one could do with being a little happier and having a greater sense of purpose. Could you? Well, you’re in luck. Today is Giving Tuesday, and I have the perfect charitable cause for you.

It Started with a Highway Exit Sign

If you’re new to Joburg Expat, you may not have heard of Alexandra Baseball, so here is a quick recap for you: When I arrived with my family in South Africa in 2010 and we were winding our way home from O.R Tambo to the new house we were to live in for the next three years, our driver pointed to an exit sign off the highway and said, rather ominously: Don’t ever go there, it’s very dangerous. The name on the sign was rather pretty, I thought: Alexandra. Then I promptly forgot about it until a few months later. I was busy looking into sports teams for my kids, as the typical American mother sets out to do upon arrival in a new place. I found none anywhere near where we lived, but Alexandra Baseball caught my name. I wanted to know more about this “dangerous” place that also had a baseball team.

From that day on, my story in South Africa became intertwined with the story of Alex Baseball. I teamed up with a nonprofit called “Pitch in For Baseball” that had free equipment for us if only we could get it to South Africa. We somehow managed to scrape together the money for the shipment, and I still remember the day I unloaded the entire stash on a pavement in Alexandra while everyone stared at the blond woman in a big car who had no business showing up in an African township. But whatever feelings of discomfort I might have had soon turned into delight as I watched the first pitch being thrown, right there in the middle of the potholed street.

Transport is a Privilege

That Alexandra Baseball has survived all these years is a small miracle. It continues to give a sizable group of kids from Alexandra a place to gather after school and experience the joys of working together to achieve big things. Some of these kids have become players on the South African National Team. Some have become coaches in their own right. But mostly, it makes me happy that Alexandra Baseball has continued to be a place of community and friendship where both are not that easy to come by.

The daily challenges for the club are huge. And the biggest one of them is transport. Any random American baseball team will take for granted that the kids are brought to their practices and games by their parents, and the coaches can happily focus on the business of coaching. Not so in Alexandra. The kids walk through the entire township to get to their practices, but Johannesburg is a sprawling metropolis and the baseball league is spread out all over the city. What’s more, not many teams are willing to come to Alexandra to play, so most of the games are away games. The only way to get the kids to their games is to hire a minibus taxi every single week.

If you have kids who’ve been active on a variety of sports teams like mine, I know your suburban American routine very well: You spend most of your afternoons in your car, crisscrossing town to and fro and back again on various trips to ever-recurring practices and games. And at some point or other, you’ve probably been tempted to howl at the heavens: Why am I the perpetual chauffeur? What those years driving in and out of Alexandra have taught me is that driving your own car is a huge privilege. It would suck to have to walk everywhere, or to stuff yourself into an overfilled minibus taxi reeking with perspiration, or to simple not be able to go anywhere at all.

This Giving Tuesday we are hoping to collect $2500 to fund transport costs and league fees for the next season of Alexandra Baseball. If we reach that goal, the Milwaukee Brewers will match our amount.

I hope that you will consider helping out this great cause. It doesn’t have to be much, but the power is in the numbers of people who contribute. To read more about how your gift will be used to help the club, and to make a donation, please click here.

I was trying to talk her down by asking her to think back to all the other times in her life she was super worried. And how that turned out in the end. I think it helped. I wish I could take the worry away but I also know the worry and then overcoming the hurdle is what makes you stronger in life.

Too often we are tempted to “save” our children. We saved them from crossing the street without looking when they’re young, and so later we save them from feeling uncomfortable or scared. Same thing, we think, but it’s not. It’s rather the opposite.

The more we give our children the opportunity to stumble while they live under our roof, the better they will be prepared for life. There are entire books written about this very topic. My favorite, most recently, was “How to Raise an Adult” by Julie Lythcott-Haims. If you have children, you have to read this book, period. If you’ll never read another parenting book in your life, this is the one you should read. Even if your kids are only 2 years old, perhaps especially then.

My favorite part about How to Raise an Adult is a checklist that tells you all the “experiences” your child should have had at each stage of growing up. Including, and not limited to, having the first fender-bender as a teenager, or even an arrest by the police. Instead of fearing these things, you should welcome the opportunity to check them off your list as an essential part of growing up.

The thing is this: Our children have to learn the lesson FDR so famously tried to instill, that the only thing they “have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Giving your kids opportunities for their worst fears to come true is perhaps your biggest contribution you can make with your parenting.

We want our children to succeed in life. We don’t want them to be paralyzed by fear. The best way to conquer your fears is for the thing that you fear so much to actually happen. Almost always, the thing happening is less bad than what you feared, and having seen it happen can be somewhat liberating.

As it turns out, Sunshine’s Paris exchange was a mixed bag. The host situation was very weird, more like a cupboard-under-the-stairs-like scenario straight out of Harry Potter than what I had imagined – happy family dinners around a sunny kitchen table where my daughter would speak increasingly fluent French. In reality, her room was tucked away to the side of a dinky apartment, and she and her roommate received meals on a tray twice a day – meals clearly made on a strict budget to not exhaust the host family compensation too much. It was not a very loving environment. But she gained a lot of independence by exploring the vast city after classes every day, and by having “survived” that which she had feared most.

It’s not only true for our children. Every once in a while we ourselves need to be pulled out of our comfort zone and come face to face with some of our silly fears.

My first night in Paris was one of those occasions. I had brought Sunshine to her host family, or rather her host mother, where in the end I left her sitting on her bed in a big puddle of tears. From there I took the Metro to Place de la Republique. I emerged into a throng of people, loud music blasting from speakers and some kind of demonstration going on. I weaved my way to the side street where, as per instructions, I retrieved the key from a lockbox in the corner of a bar. Then I was off again, this time in search of my apartment.

Finding the house was the first challenge. Of course there was no house number on my building. I finally deduced which one it must be, found the keypad, and was surprised and thrilled in equal measure that it worked. I heaved open the heavy door, walked through a quiet courtyard, and found another door where I had to swipe my key fob. Up the elevator to the 5th floor, more stairs up to another door where the final key also worked and I was in.

First challenge accomplished, but I won’t lie, I was a little bit apprehensive about all the unknowns. What would I do if the key didn’t work? If I could never find the house? Would anybody be there to help? It’s not like I could easily contact anyone. I had to sort of have the apartment’s wifi before I could communicate.  

The bigger challenge turned out to be getting out of the house again, later, when I was hungry and went in search of dinner. Standing like an idiot in front of the closed door to the courtyard, and then in front of the heavy iron door to the street, I realized that I had no idea how to open either one of them. No one had felt the need to leave any instructions.

It’s not that it was a huge problem, as problems go. Sooner or later someone was bound to come out, and that is exactly what happened. I watched how they pressed the hidden-away button I hadn’t seen, and bingo, I was out.

And yet, it was a very uncomfortable 10 minutes. It made me empathize with my kids when they tell me something was very “sketch”, or that it was embarrassing to have to wait around at school waiting for pickup when all the other kids have already left. It’s awkward to be standing around looking out of place. It comes back to the “fear of fear itself.” There is no rational reason to be afraid, and yet we vaguely are. We hate to be the one who doesn’t know how things are done.

The next evening, after exploring Paris and dragging my tired feet from the banks of the Seine back to Rue de Chateau d’Eau, I experienced another moment of panic.

My phone (and thus Google maps) was out of battery. The battery backup pack I had in my backpack was not charged as expected. I had no map! Help!

Thanks to having looked it up on Google Maps many times leading up to my trip, I did remember the address. But which direction to go in? I had not wished for an actual paper map with such fervor in a long time. Back home in America, when in need of a map, I’m always in my car with its phone charger in it. I’m never caught without Google telling me where to go. It’s quite unsettling to be thrown back to the 1980s without good old 1980s technology, in other words a foldable map. Later, in Barcelona, I wised up and carried a paper map with me at all times. You have no idea how many people stopped me on the street and asked where I had bought it. I could have had quite the side business selling paper maps.

The thing is, I was so terrified to be alone on a street in Paris without a clear path back to my place, because I have somehow become alienated from the very easy and obvious solution: Simply asking for directions. Since we’ve become used to having our own (non-judgmental) devices we can ask for help at any hour, we have lost our ability to ask actual people for help.

I was rescued without having to do the unthinkable. I stopped to think for a second and went back to a bus stop I had just passed by. The bus stop had a neighborhood map, and there, lo and behold, was my street, just a few blocks over. Relief flooded over me like a warm and gentle wave. I was saved!

I wonder: How horrible would the alternative have been if I hadn’t found that bus stop?

Well, as it happens, I lived through just that kind of adventure at the tender age of 18. But that will be the topic of another story coming soon.

Not so for a robot. For a robot to walk, every tiny movement has to be programmed ahead of time, every bump needs to be foreseen, and still catastrophe can strike at any moment.

What I’m here to tell you is that traveling should be approached the same way a human learns to walk.

Unfortunately, many of my fellow Americans prefer to program that robot, so to speak, when it comes to traveling. A friend of mine (of Australian and Scottish origin living in the United States) tells this anecdote: 

“Where is a good place to eat in Edinburgh,” she says friends will ask.

“Ummm, everywhere?” is typically her answer.

But Americans – forgive my generalization here; If it makes you feel better, I count myself among them – love nothing more than being in total control when traveling. 

It’s understandable. In the U.S. we get much less vacation time than the average world traveler, so we want to make sure that we see everything in the allotted time. I mean EVERYTHING! And to make it all happen, things need to be planned like Eisenhower’s invasion of Normandy. Nothing can be left to chance. Your tour guides must be vetted before signing up, restaurant reviews must be scrutinized like your life depended on it, and pictures must be snapped with cold-blooded efficiency.

There is not really a problem with this approach. It usually works remarkably well. No one can take Europe by storm like a determined American racing through six cities in ten days, checklist of landmarks in hand. 

But I would posit that most of these tourist warriors don’t end up really seeing the country they’re in at all. What they go home with is the pictures they’ve already seen a million times. The Eiffel Tower. The Louvre. Notre Dame. But did they really experience France and, more importantly, the French?

As you might have deduced, I have the privilege of staying in Paris at the moment. I’m here to drop Sunshine, now 17, off at an exchange program where she’ll attend language school. It’s been a bit of a mixed bag. These families hosting students do it for the money and don’t much integrate them into their families. But this has an unexpected upside: My daughter, overprotected like every American teenager, suddenly finds herself with the freedom to roam the streets of this vast city all by herself, as long as she gets home by 9 pm.

Initially, she was terrified. What if I get lost, she wanted to know? 

“You can’t get lost,” I explained to her. “You can only get temporarily delayed.”

She knows her address and her Metro stop, and in Paris that’s all you need. Her unlimited Metro pass has been worth gold. Reluctant at first as a bird not wanting to leave its golden cage, she has slowly embraced her newfound autonomy. There are still small moments of panic when finding herself on the wrong train, but once a level head is regained, the problem can typically be solved very easily.

What works for the goose works for the gander. These past few days, I have been wandering the streets of Paris rather aimlessly, letting myself drift in one direction or another. Each street corner poses a slew of possibilities. Does this way look promising or that? What are the signs pointing out? Where might I find a shady bench to sit down for a while to read my book? Again and again, I have let myself get lost by simply following a group of people, the glimpse of a church spire, or a pleasant scent. 

Easy for her, you might say. It’s true – I have the luxury of poo-pooing my fellow travelers’ rush to see the Mona Lisa in a throng of ten thousand other people because this is not my first time in Paris. It also helps that I’m traveling alone. No need to consult with anyone or cede to their – no doubt stronger – opinion. My camera roll shows none of the iconic sights of Paris, but I’ve discovered the loveliest corners. La Place des Vosges – one-time residence of Victor Hugo – in the late afternoon, when families come down with young and old to mingle and relax. The Jewish quarter in the Marais where one can find Paris’ best falafel and pastries right next to each other. Le Café Procope, where one can see Benjamin Franklin’s portrait in the window right next to that of Robespierre, butcher of so many. 

You’ll be amazed what kind of detail you take note of when you are not hastening to the next stop on your agenda. It reminds me of my childhood, when traveling to a foreign country was so deliciously exotic that even a visit to the toilet provoked a sense of wonder. 

I have never been this relaxed on a vacation. I have no stress, because I have no places to check off my list. I have not exhausted myself waiting in long lines. And I have enjoyed nothing more than returning to my tiny apartment over the rooftops of Paris in the evening and sitting there by the window, letting the street noises waft up to me. And through all of this, I have fallen in love with Paris more deeply than ever before.

If we give up our need to control everything and just let ourselves drift a little bit, we get to experience a new place very differently. Perhaps this can be said of life as well?

Just consider: If you didn’t make a plan, you can’t be disappointed if things don’t go according to it. Everything feels right. You’ll never have any fear of missing out. You’ll never have time pressure. You’ll simply drift along and absorb the wonders of a new and exotic land.

I challenge you to give this a try when you next touch down in distant lands. Practice the art of getting temporarily lost. 

Start with living where the locals live (Airbnb is your friend). Ditch TripAdvisor entirely. There simply isn’t a need to ask others were to eat. Nothing has poisoned the joys of discovery more than TripAdvisor, even though I admit I’m a regular contributor. 

Throughout all these years of traveling, my fondest memories of meals I’ve once had are exclusively of places I knew nothing about until that moment: The little pizzeria in the Trastevere region of Rome just 5 minutes from our place that we stumbled upon, ravenous and ready to sit down, never matched again in atmosphere and quality of food for the rest of our Italy vacation; The hilltop restaurant in Lisbon recommended not ten minutes earlier by our taxi driver who was not lying when he said it would be unforgettable; the little tapas place in Barcelona – where there are thousands of tapas places to choose from – that I only picked because of a promising window bench where I could slouch down and read my book. Any prior research would have been exhausting and pointless. Just like in Edinburgh, you can eat everywhere in Rome, or Lisbon, or Barcelona. Don’t let your need for control and perfection spoil the joy of spontaneous discovery.

Perhaps, next time you travel abroad, you will try my approach. Tame your need to research everything ahead of time. Stay longer, rather than shorter, in a given place. Don’t plan out your days. Instead, just walk out the front door every morning, turn your head to see which direction looks good, and simply start walking.

I promise you, good things will happen.

It’s those 40-foot container ones you need professional help with. I have learned that it’s important to work with an international shipping provider who is responsive throughout the move, and who makes it look easy. It starts with understanding how an international move works.

Below, Josh with International Van Lines explains in easy to understand terms how your international move from the United States to Johannesburg might look.

Tips, Options, and Shipping Methods for your Move to Johannesburg

by Josh Morales

Congratulations on your decision to move from the U.S. to Johannesburg. As the largest city in South Africa, Johannesburg has a lot to offer, including its rich culture, beautiful scenery, and endless things to experience. Although moving overseas can be exciting, it can also be stressful. In this article, we will provide relocation tips, shipping options, and what to look for when searching for a mover from the U.S. to Johannesburg. 

How to find a mover

Finding a moving company may seem as easy as doing a quick Google search; however, when moving from the U.S. to Johannesburg, it’s essential that you find a company with experience. Moving overseas requires skill, knowledge, and proper licensing. The Federal Maritime Commission is the governing agency for ocean transport from the United States. Before committing, make sure you scout their website for company history.

The next step is to see what others say about their service. It’s always good to check a company’s reviews and get feedback from other expats that have utilized their services. The number one mistake we see is people price shopping. Moving overseas is an expensive luxury, but trust me, it will cost you more in the end if you chose the wrong mover.

Shipping Options

Ocean freight is the most common mode of transportation. It’s the most economical and safe, in terms of damage. The size of your move will determine if you will require a full container load (FCL) or less than container load (LCL). Full Containers come in three sizes, 20″, 40″ and 40″ high cube. The container would be exclusive to you, and you can choose from a door to door or door to port service. In a full door to door move everything is covered, whereas on a door to port service you would be responsible for arranging transportation from Johannesburg port to the final destination, as well as customs documentation. 

For smaller moves, say 30 boxes, an LCL shipment would be adequate. An LCL is also known as a consolidation service. Your boxes and goods would be loaded in a container with other deliveries that are going to Johannesburg. The average shipping time on an LCL shipment is about 30-40 days, depending on the mover’s ability. 

The final shipping option is air freight. Air freight shipping is geared toward people who are in a hurry. If you need your stuff promptly and don’t mind paying a large sum of money, air freight is the way to go. Not all moving companies offer air freight, so make sure you do some research. 

How to save money on your move

The size of your move will determine the final cost, so downsizing is a great way to cut costs on your move. Moving is a great time to declutter and to figure out what you can live without. You can donate items to charity, sell some stuff online, or give it away. Another great way to reduce cost is to self-pack. You can purchase packing material at any local U-Haul, Home Depot or Walmart. It’s crucial that you create an inventory list with values. 

International Van Lines

IVL offers international moving services from the U.S. to over 180 countries. We have experience with moving expats from the U.S. to Johannesburg. We’re licensed by the Federal Maritime Commission, bonded, and offer full insurance coverage on all international relocations. 

I hope this article was informative, and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at any time. You can also request a moving quote online.

This article was sponsored by International Van Lines.

Huh, I thought. What do you know, one of the Christmas cards didn’t make it.

Unusual perhaps, considering that summer break is about to start in the Northern Hemisphere. But I’ve been there before. As you know, I once conducted an experiment to test the South African Postal Service compared with other postal services around the world.

I had been accused of using shady “anecdotal evidence” when complaining about slow and corrupt mail service. So I decided to up my game in terms of evidence.

I made an elaborate spreadsheet tracking every single Christmas card I sent that year, and then badgered everyone to tell me exactly when theirs arrived. No surprise that South Africa took the top, or rather bottom, prize in both the longest average transit time (27 days) and longest actual transit time (44 days). If interested, you can view all the results here. It makes for some fascinating international comparisons.

Back to my driveway in May 2019. No surprise that the offending Christmas card returned to sender was from South Africa.

Hm, I thought again. The Dickerson Family. I don’t recall sending them a card.

And then I dropped my entire stack of mail, I was so shocked. Here is the card so you can see for yourself:

It wasn’t the most recent Christmas card, which would have been 2018. It wasn’t even the one from the year before. It was a Christmas card from 2016!

Yes, in one way this is another proof that the South African Postal Service stinks. They have a horrifically high rate of lost or stolen mail, and when stuff does get delivered, it takes much longer than in most other countries in the world.

And yet, I can’t help but have admiration for the fact that this card did, in fact, resurface. Where was it all this time? How many humongous storage facilities must SAPO maintain to be able to house these huge amounts of lost mail – because surely this card is one of many such items?

Essentially, the SA Post Office has managed to hold on to my card for longer than Donald Trump has been president (which everyone knows has been far too long). I mailed it on December 21, 2016, from Nashville, TN. And it was time-stamped by SAPO on February 15, 2019 (and then took still another three months to make it back to Nashville). Where was it in all the time between?

I don’t think SAPO ever attempted to deliver it. The red stamp is smudged so I can’t see what their internal reason for non-delivery was. At the time, the address would have been correct, so had they delivered it then, it should have arrived.  I think it got lost, resurfaced this year, and of course by now these friends have long moved elsewhere.

We will never know. But I find it remarkable that someone spotted my card over two years later and dutifully stamped it, signed and dated it, and sent it on its way.

Somebody at the South African Postal Service was being diligent.

If you are moving to South Africa and don’t know where to look for a house, you might be overwhelmed with the choices. I’d like to make it easier for you: Move to Dainfern Valley!

Seriously, you can’t go wrong. There were so many things to love about it:

• It’s in a great location. If your kids go to the American School of Johannesburg, it’s convenient, but not as far out from the city as other neighborhoods surrounding AISJ.
• It’s even more convenient if your kids go (walk!) to Dainfern College right next door – which our kids attended and another reason our family loved life in South Africa.
• There are plenty of great shopping options nearby. I was perfectly happy with the walking distance Valley Shopping Centre, but now there is the newly built Dainfern Square right next door. Fourways with its bigger stores and doctors offices is just a 10-minute drive away.
• It’s gorgeous. Dainfern Valley spans two hills, bisected at the bottom by the Jukskei River. The views from just about anywhere in the neighborhood are stunning, walks along the river are spectacular, and the lush and tropical landscaping will bring joy to you every single day.
• It’s right next to Dainfern Estate (or “Dainfern Proper”), the Golf Estate, giving you access to its facilities and community but saving you from having to drive through its sprawl every day. Properties are also bigger than in Dainfern Estate. You get more house for your money.
• It’s safe. In our three years in Dainfern Valley, we never had any security incidents, yet we never felt “walled-in.” Our kids moved freely inside and around the neighborhood. It felt no different from any regular neighborhood in the U.S. – except we miss the friendly smiles every day coming in and out of the estate.
• Dainfern Valley houses are stylish, spacious, and perfect for an active lifestyle. We loved our pool, our separate games room, and hosting parties around the braai.

All of these are great reasons why I can wholeheartedly recommend the beautiful 4-bedroom Dainfern Valley home described below. Just looking at the pictures brings back a lot of memories!

4 Bed classic style home, furnished/unfurnished – Dainfern Valley Secure Residential Estate

This beautiful, classic style home has a welcoming entrance hall leading to a large open plan lounge and dining area with a centered fireplace making it cozy for chilly winter evenings. This area has two custom built servers/cupboards, one of which contains a wine cooler.

Through foldaway doors, the lounge leads out to an undercover large enclosed entertainment room with a built-in wood fire barbeque/braai area which can be opened with sliding doors during the hot summers. This in turn leads out to a beautiful and ample sun deck, a swimming pool (6x4m), and a lush garden area.

There is another playroom/sunroom area that leads out to another part of the deck under an adjustable shaded pergola that joins on to an alternative dining/lounge area placed right next to the large classic style spacious kitchen with granite tops.

The kitchen has ample cupboard space and a central island and leads to a separate scullery which houses the dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer spaces as well as additional cupboards for storage. This scullery also has direct access into the large, spacious double garage. The driveway allows for an additional 6 vehicles to park within the property’s perimeter.

From the back door of the kitchen you will find a beautiful water feature, with built herb & veggie garden boxes and a lemon tree. A wooden toolshed to the left makes this space nice and private and gives you a place to keep all garden related equipment.

To the right of this area is an additional flatlet with one en-suite bedroom with shower, toilet & basin, and a kitchenette lounge area. This can be used as an additional guest suite or for live in staff, should you employ a domestic.

And that was just the downstairs!

Upstairs, the home offers 4 double bedrooms, of which 2 are en-suite and two of the bedrooms share one large bathroom. The master bedroom is extra spacious and offers walk-through closets to a beautiful full bathroom with bath and shower, and also has a large balcony with beautiful views over the landscape. There is also a study/gym area upstairs, offering extra space if needed.

With all of this on offer, this is your ideal family home!

Triscan Place 2115 is a beautiful family home situated in one of Johannesburg’s finest upmarket, secure estates and located next to the popular Dainfern Golf Estate. If you value privacy, spacious homes, and lush surroundings, Dainfern Valley is the right estate for you and your family. It has beautiful walking routes, along the river and in the estate and with direct access from the estate into Dainfern College – ideal for children of all ages.

Other schools in close proximity are Reddam House as well as The American International School and of course Crawford College and many more.

Please email, text, or call Lanie or Willem if you are interested in this home.

Email:  triscanplace@gmail.com
Lanie:  0829902003
Willem: 0843269941

This is a sponsored post. Opinions about Dainfern Valley are entirely my own. 

Altogether, I have moved seven times in my life. Five of those were international moves. And six of them were with children in tow. So I think it’s not too much of an exaggeration when I say I know a little bit about moving around the world.

Moving all by yourself isn’t that big a deal. That was my very first move, at age 24. I had exactly one (1) bicycle and (1) overstuffed suitcase to my name, and moving them from Germany to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1991 involved booking a plane ticket and arranging a pickup by my then-boyfriend at Dulles International Airport. He showed up, I’ll have you note, with a Chrysler LeBaron Station wagon with wood panel on the sides. That was that, until our next move in 1997 to Singapore.

It’s amazing how much can change in just six years, and with the addition of a child. Instead of moving a bike and a suitcase each, we were now traveling with a 40-foot container, helped by an army of professional movers. We would repeat this feat five more times, the container stuffed more to the hilt each successive time.

These being corporate moves, we had little influence over which moving company we used, and I didn’t really pay attention. But one of these companies stood out and is seared in my memory: Crown Relocations, who moved us from Singapore back to the United States in 1999.

Okay, so one reason I remember them is this:

I mean, you can’t forget that cuteness, right?

But this picture proves a point. Crown stood out, because they thought of all the details. I mean, no other company had ever given us boxes for the kids, and Zax absolutely loved his truck box. It made packing up with him underfoot so much easier. Their consultants, when they came to take inventory, were professional but also super friendly. Everything was on time, the communication was flawless, the boxing up careful but swift, and when it all arrived in Raleigh a few months later, we had no complaints.

Should you be on the lookout for a moving company, I can wholeheartedly recommend Crown to you, which is why I’ve given them the opportunity to tell you about their services below.

Moving with Crown Relocations

Crown Relocations is one of the leading relocations companies globally, helping individuals and families move for over fifty years. With a global presence in over 54 countries, you can relocate safe in the knowledge you’ll receive a consistent level of service at origin and destination.

Getting the right support for your move

With people on the ground around the globe, you’ll have the support you need at every step of the way. With 200 offices around the world, “being there” can mean much more than simply just being on the ground. During every relocation, the team at Crown Relocations aims to support families with guidance and genuine care to help you find your feet again and lessen any disruption.

Container options

We’ll also be able to guide you on the right type of container for you, depending on the items you wish to take. As well as a variety of container sizes, Crown Relocations also offer a ‘groupage’ option. Groupage is a shared container where you only pay for the volume of goods you’re shipping back over the cost of a complete container. Perfect for those moves where you’re downsizing your items beforehand.

Assuring you along the way

On packing day the crew use a unique ePacking system to digitally itemise your items for the move and scan at every point on the journey. Your items are also photographed before disassembly; this is so the crew at your destination can reassemble your items exactly as you left them. We also use state of the art eco-friendly packing materials to protect any high value items you wish to take with you.

Offering you additional piece of mind

We also offer CrownCare Protection. This is transit marine insurance. With our cover, any incidents that arise to a claim are handled by your dedicated Move Manager at your destination in super-fast time.

Interested to find out more? Visit www.crownrelo.com.

PS:  Crown Relocations is currently running a promotion of 10% off your move.  Just visit their website to get a quote and you’ll be eligible for the discount.

This article was sponsored by Crown Relocations. Opinions expressed are entirely my own.

These moments of peace are among my fondest memories of our three years in South Africa.

The location: Shumbashaba Stables, halfway between Dainfern and Diepsloot in one of the loveliest areas surrounding Johannesburg.

Shumbashaba, which means “Lion of the Nation” in Shona, was founded by my dear friend Sharon Boyce to help disadvantaged and disabled people through therapeutic riding programs. My daughters were taking riding lessons under the expert direction of Renae Erasmus, who has been a stalwart at Sharon’s side almost from the beginning. I watched them progress from desperately clutching the reins while a groom led their horse, to dressage competitions where they commanded their ponies in supreme concentration, jumping competitions, and the free-wheeling fun of vaulting, four girls at a time, on the broad back of Shumbashaba’s biggest horse, Mr. Watts.

But teaching horseback riding is just a small sliver of what Shumbashaba does. Below, I’m going to show you all the great initiatives they are involved in, and hopefully by the end you’ll be ready to roll up your sleeves and join in their efforts to make the world a better place.

Hippotherapy and Therapeutic Riding

No one quite seems to know why, but it’s well-documented that horses have a way of helping the disabled, particularly children. Whether horses can somehow sense the vulnerability of humans who face obstacles in life, or whether it is the sense of achievement we all feel when forging a bond to such a formidable – and initially scary – animal, there is something in the interaction with horses that has a calming and empowering effect on the disabled. The staff at Shumbashaba regularly works with Bona Lesedi Day Care Centre in Diepsloot by bringing out children to ride and interact with the horses while supervised by therapists.

Horses Helping People

The correct term is equine assisted learning and psychotherapy. Again, the horses are employed to help the people who interacting with them. These outreach programs instill confidence and life skills in kids living in underserved communities in Diepsloot and beyond. Just like with the disabled, the bond between horse and child together with the responsibility of taking care of a horse, help teach important lessons about persistence and respect to kids who don’t otherwise get many opportunities to find their place in the world. For victims of trauma, addiction, and eating disorders there are additional counseling and psychotherapy services woven into the riding program. The children can attend weekly sessions, holiday camps, and other annual events around these themes.

Special Olympics

With the help of Special Olympics SA, Shumbashaba co-hosts two Unified Sports Days every year, where people with intellectual disabilities compete in various sporting categories. A high point for the program was when two riders from Shumbashaba participated in the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Los Angeles!

Sponsorships

There are a handful of Shumbashaba-trained riders ready to start their competitive careers in dressage and showjumping. Each one of them shows promise, but the financial constraints are severe. Shumbashaba is looking to the equestrian community for support to help out with sponsorships that could take the form of an “adopt-a-rider” program. Sponsors are needed for both financial support, mentorship, and hands-on support on the day of the show.

Getting Involved

As you can imagine, keeping all of this going takes a lot of effort. The wonderful Shumbashaba community really needs your help. In South Africa, getting government funding for outreach activities like this can be extremely difficult and time-consuming. The best way to keep all these programs going is to keep growing the network of dedicated volunteers. And that’s where you come in. You don’t have to be a “horse person” at all. If you are an expat and are eager to get involved with a meaningful project to get to know South Africa and make some good friends along the way, the Shumbashaba family is perfect for you!

There are many ways to get involved:

• The most pressing need is money for supplies, food, and fees. A R100 donation would go a long way towards fulfilling the 2019 fundraising goal.
• Sponsoring meals or snacks for participants
• Donating equipment – stable accessories, benches, fencing, poles, second-hand tack, riding clothes etc.
• Donating education materials such as books, videos, etc.
• Volunteering your time to help out whenever you can.

Please contact Shumbashaba if you are interested in volunteering, or to inquire about riding lessons for your children: http://www.shumbashaba.co.za.

Again, Shumbashaba is in desperate need of cash funds and would welcome your small donation. Please click here to make one right now.

I wish I could say I’m on book leave, but I am not, in fact, making much progress on any meaningful writing. My accomplishments this year are more modest: Churning out a steady stream of blog posts about hair restoration and liposuction, gaining a smidgen more knowledge about those dual sinkholes of WordPress and Google Ads, and improving my tennis serve. Oh, and Kilimanjaro Diaries came out as an audio book, but I already bragged about that elsewhere.

Tonight I’d like to share some of the thoughts I’ve been mulling over the past few weeks. I’m not sure if it’s the looming year-end that put me in a reflective mood, or perhaps the realization how futile all our pursuits are, no matter how hard we try. Every year the holidays bring out a frenzy of activity, but what do we have to show for our bone-crushing holiday efforts afterwards? Just a few more pounds around the midsection curtesy of too many Christmas cookies, and a house cluttered with new stuff we didn’t really need.

One of my presents, however, is truly cherished, and it’s also the one that inspired me to write this blog post: Becoming, by Michele Obama. It’s kind of funny: We have three copies strewn through our house. I gave both girls a copy each, and, in a surprise twist, they gave me one as well. We, our family’s feminist contingent, are now all reading it simultaneously and comparing our favorite anecdotes.

There is much in it to make you think about life, our roles in society, and our roles in our families. What does it mean to be a woman, a corporate lawyer, a mother, and in her case, black? Why do some of us have the need to try so dang hard to prove that we are good enough, that we belong?

She had me already with the opening paragraph. “I used to tell people that when I grew up, I was going to be a pediatrician,” she muses. She quickly learned, she said, that it pleased the adults around her when she said it. Much of her ambition in life – and she achieved plenty with it, entirely on her own merits before becoming First Lady – was fueled by the realization that she craved the approval of those around her. Only much later did she come to realize that this wasn’t enough. “Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child – What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”

Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child – What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.

There are many other nuggets of pure delight in these pages. Michelle Obama is incredibly relatable. Perhaps that is why she is such a popular – THE most popular – figure in our country in these polarizing times. You feel like she is telling you her story over a cup of coffee, just like when you are chatting with your best friend and each of you is nodding your head vigorously in light of your shared experiences. Much of what she says is sound and reasonable, always delivered in easygoing prose and often laced with exquisite humor.

Another person you immediately fall in love with when reading Becoming is Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson. A woman who “would never be rich but was always crafty,” she comes across as that solid rock each family would be fortunate to have. Loving but firm, never overindulging her children but always supporting them, she saw her goal in life to instill good values in her children and give them opportunities she herself didn’t have.

“My mother maintained the sort of parental mind-set that I now recognize as brilliant and nearly impossible to emulate – a kind of unflappable Zen neutrality,” muses Michelle. “She wasn’t quick to judge and she wasn’t quick to meddle… Her goal was to push us out into the world.” There were guidelines, not rules, she explains. No curfew, but expectations and trust. “‘I’m not raising babies,’ she’d tell us. ‘I’m raising adults.'”

My mother maintained the sort of parental mind-set that I now recognize as brilliant and nearly impossible to emulate – a kind of unflappable Zen neutrality.

I love everything about this paragraph. Not only does it distill volumes of wisdom from all my favorite parenting books* in one tidy summary, it also gives me a belated sense of achievement. I have tried to live by exactly that parenting style with my own children, and seeing it praised by someone I truly admire gave me a gratifying sense of pride. All too often, we treat parenting like a side show. There is so much else to do every day, so much else to achieve. Parenting is just something that happens, and we neither expect, nor get, any feedback on how we’re doing. We just plow along day-in day-out. For the vast majority of us, our daughter won’t one day write a bestselling memoir extolling our accomplishments as a mother. In some ways, Michelle’s ode to her mother stands in as a hymn of praise to all the mothers out there.

For anyone with an interest in the 44th President, Becoming offers a wealth of information in its second part. I loved learning more about Barack, the man, as seen through the eyes of someone who is everything that he is not. “Barack Obama was late on day one,” is the first thing we learn. We get an idea of her husband’s character simply by hearing Michelle tell us that she is his opposite. “I was a box checker,” says Michelle, “marching to the resolute beat of effort/result, effort/result – a devoted follower of the established path, if only because nobody in my family… had ever set foot on the path before.” Barack Obama, we thus learn, is not a box checker. He is a breath of fresh air (and sometimes a terrifying tempest) in Michelle’s well-ordered life. He doesn’t do things because they look impressive, he doesn’t get stopped from doing something meaningful because he is busy doing something respectable, he doesn’t “endure misery for the sake of appearances.” She compares him to a circus performer juggling plates: “If things got too calm, he took it as a sign that there was more to do. He was a serial over-committer.”

But I digress a little. I didn’t want to turn this into a verdict on our last president (plus, his successor is rendering that verdict beautifully as a perfect study in opposites). I also haven’t finished Becoming, and there might be a lot more in it to discuss.

I simply wanted to share what I’m thinking of these days. My kids are growing up, ready to go out into the world to make their own mark, and I can only hope that, like Marian Robinson, I’ve given them a good foundation to build upon. I hope that they know that growing up is never finite. That the joy in life is that you never stop learning. That the goal is not “becoming” something and being done, but using our passions to pursue meaning. That they are good enough, no matter what path they choose, because there are a million different paths that are “good enough.” For my girls especially – that women bear a bigger burden balancing families and careers is a recurring theme in Becoming – I hope that they will find that elusive balance in life, learning how to pursue personal goals while also raising a family with a firm but graceful hand.

We had moved to South Africa for the multi-national company he was with at the time. He was put in charge of a project subcontracted by South Africa’s utility, Eskom, to build the forever-behind-schedule Kusile and Medupi power plants. (Both plants have finally been brought online, about four years late.)

Managing the South African operations was a constant challenge for Noisette. He had a lot more employees than ever before, but beyond their sheer numbers, they were also not like anyone he’d managed before. Perhaps this is a charitable way to put it: They showed ingenuity and ambition mainly when it came to improving their own lot, not so much the company’s.

This is the ingenuity they came up with in this particular instance. Noisette, ever environmentally conscious, had arranged a recycling service for the office’s used paper. The fee schedule was based on weight or some other variable – x amount of old paper removed meant it cost x * y rate of ZAR per kg of paper.

To be honest, I’m not exactly sure who got paid what. Did the recycling company collect a fee based on how much they hauled away? Or did a middle man come to pick it up for free, able to resell it at one of Johannesburg’s recycling buy-back centres?

It doesn’t matter. Someone in the office figured out that the paper did not have to, in fact, be used, before being recycled and fetch a profit. Brand-new sheets of paper out of the box worked just as well, and there was a lot more of that available. One just had to take it out of the boxes stacked in the copy room, carry it over to the recycling bins, and voila, here was an end product with potential value – either by getting a kickback from the  recycling firm, or in terms of a profit split with whoever resold it at the buy-back centre.

Soon, the copy room became the hub for this profitable venture. Pristine white sheafs of paper would arrive in big stacks, which would almost immediately be dumped into the recycling bins to be carried away for ever higher profits. Noisette only found out about it months later when by chance he saw this operation carried out, and by connecting what he had seen with the ever rising costs of their office supplies.

As it was, this was just a minor bump on his balance sheet. He had bigger problems to contend with – entire steel girders mysteriously disappearing in the dead of night, entire warehouses dwindling down to mere shells of what was supposedly stocked in them. Whether this is a sad remnant of the old Apartheid days, an inbred desire to sabotage the system at all costs that even this new generation of workers has not quite overcome, or whether it is simply a symptom of a vastly unequal society where some resort to stealing to get by, is not quite clear to me. In fact, with unemployment as high as it is in South Africa, one would think that you’d try hard as an employee not to lose your job and your livelihood by stealing from your employer. Then again, if everyone does it, it’s perhaps easy enough to get away with it.

The ongoing joke in our neighborhood, Dainfern Valley, was that one day the rampant theft of coveted aluminum plates off the gleaming “shitpipe” that spanned the valley in a graceful arc would lead to its contents literally raining down all over its wealthy residents. It never came to pass, at least not while we lived there, but the looming threat was always in the backs of our minds. Thievery is a constant companion to life in South Africa, but as I’ve said before, it somehow manages to be of a more charming kind as elsewhere, whether that’s fair or not. Whenever I took in my car for service, I cheerfully stripped glove compartments and cupholders of any valuables, down to the water bottle, because you could be sure none of it would be there when you’d get it back. Whatever coins you left in your middle console would be taken, almost like a tip, by whoever was repairing or detailing your car. This was just one of the things you did, without much thought or resentment, just like you never quite expected any packages someone sent you from overseas through the postal service to actually arrive.

So… If you are new to South Africa and in charge of managing an office there, you might be well advised to check what’s going on in your copy room.

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If you liked this post, you might enjoy Joburg Expat’s Welcome to Africa collection of stories. If you prefer pictures, check out Only in Africa.