When I was her age, shortly after finishing school, my first and furthest journey was tossing my Lejeune bike and little canvas rucksack onto the back of a flatbed fish factory truck, and climbing up to sit on the hard steel surface.
What a great adventure for me that was! The noisy, bumpy and windy 120km on the straight West coast road. Going southwards from Laaiplek. And then being abruptly offloaded at a traffic light in peak hour Goodwood in a hard rain. Had to find my way to grandma’s house in the Cape Flats.
Man! What a little trip that was! I was young. I did not have a phone or a map, but Table Mountain gave direction. I possessed no wallet, but I became a lot richer.
And now – how times have changed – and stayed the same. As she says goodbye – 12000km from home, and leaves for her first solo adventure.
Yes – she has a wallet, a phone and a passport. But there is no familiar mountain, no grandma’s house to go to, and the wind smells different in the Black Forest.
What memories will she be looking back to 40 years from now?
“A newborn calf is not afraid of tigers” – Chinese proverb, I think.
