My Big Toe Hurts

I do not blog because I approach life with such rampant enthusiasm I cannot bear to let an unrecorded moment slip by; I do not blog because I think I lead an enviably fascinating life that everybody is just busting to read about. 

I blog because I’m lonely. 

Yup. That’s me: the poor sad cow who talks to herself in cyberspace.  

Because there’s nobody here to talk to. 

Except darling Hat, of course, who suffers her mother’s frustrations at life in an Outpost with characteristic charm and sweetness and generosity: ‘It’s OK, Mum, you can talk to me”. 

And I can: about Barbie’s or what’s on the telly or what to cook or what to sew or when to swim or go for a walk, about the wonderful and briefly illuminating characters she introduces me to. We talk about lots of things.

But I cannot talk to her about how desperately isolating I find this place. 

That’d be unfair.  

Not to say churlish: if she is graceful enough to understand why we need to be here, old enough, at just ten, to accept that; why aren’t I? 

And my husband. I talk to him: about what’s on the news, or his day, or where we can escape to when we manage to get away.  But I cannot moan perpetually to him about being lonely. For he’d lose patience and get cross with me and then he wouldn’t talk to me about what’s on the news or his day or where we’re going on holiday. He wouldn’t talk to me at all. 

But it is lonely. 

Imagine a place where there is nothing to do unless you drive the entertainment yourself. And nowhere to go. Nowhere. Not unless you are prepared to undertake an expedition in a 4WD. (My forays out are either to Kaidi’s duka for milk or the market for bananas). The Outpost is almost 100 miles from an asphalt road. Almost three hundred from the nearest big town (where one could shop, a bit, or people watch, a bit, or eat out at more than one place). And it’s five hundred miles from anywhere to shop in a proper shop (the kind you might happily browse in), have lunch with a girlfriend, order a cappuccino, get your hair done. It is miles from a game park (despite being in the middle of the bush) and the other side of the country from the coast. It is as if it has been dropped from some celestial body high above onto the loneliest African plains on a passing whim. The only place to escape to is into yourself. Which I do: I climb into the pool and plough up and down until I am so weak knee’d and winded from the effort that I can’t think straight. And that’s good. 

People articulated concern when I moved here. But with feigned ebullience I told them, ‘’oh it’ll be fine, I’ll keep busy’. 

And I do. In a wafty sort of directionless way. For there is little to punctuate the beginning and the end of the day, like school runs (imagine missing your school run so much it almost makes you weep?!). Where once I set my alarm for 6 to get the kids up and out the door for school by seven, there is no real need to get up with any urgency here; I can begin school whenever I like: 8, 9, 10. And that’s not entirely a good thing. Where once I parcelled my chores into a few hours in order to tear across town to pick the children up, now I can take all day faffing. And that’s not a good thing either. 

Days go by and I see nobody other than my daughter, my husband, Sylvester the garden boy, Kaidi for a pint of milk. 

I need to practice having a conversation I tell myself but I find picking up the phone harder than it was once: which friend haven’t I called so recently that she’ll see my number and say ‘’oh gawd, not again, why doesn’t she get a sodding life!””. 

For I have so little to say. Other than ‘I taught, I walked, I wrote, I wished I weren’t so bloody far away.‘

’Hi there, it’s me’’. Again. 

‘’Oh hi, just dashing to town’’. 

‘’Oh. Right. Is this a bad time then?’’ 

‘’No, no, but I can’t chat long’’. 

‘Oh. Ok” 

Silence. 

‘’Well .. how are you? Busy? How are the kids?’’ 

‘’Fine, fine, very busy, never a spare moment, had visitors last weekend, got some more this weekend, going to an art exhibition and drinks on Saturday and got to host a birthday party for Jack on Sunday. God. Manic’’.  

‘’Right’’. (Lucky you). 

‘’How are you?’’, distractedly. I think she’s talking to somebody else at the same time. 

‘’Oh fine. You know. Bearing up. Bit lonely’’. 

A laugh, then, ‘’C’mon, it can’t be that bad.  There must be somebody to talk to?’’ 

‘’No. Not really’’.  

There’s the missionaries (who are very nice but a long ago memory of distant attempt by same to convert me to full blown bible reading Christianity has unnerved me), there’s a few do-good volunteers (who I’m sure are also very nice, very young, about my son’s age).  

‘’Anyway, look, sorry, I must run – I’m off to get my hair done, how delicious is that? And then I’m going to meet C for lunch’’. 

Cow. 

‘’Oh. Ok then. Bye. Talk soon’’. 

And I put the receiver down and wish I hadn’t called for now I feel emptier than before. 

I am lucky: I have a husband who loves me (most days), three glorious children whom I adore (most days – even if two of them are too far away to tell them that often enough), a home (in an ideal world not the home of my choice: but a home nonetheless) and a better internet connection than I’ve ever had. And I’m lucky because I can look forward to lunch. In Africa not a lot of people can do that. 

But I crave company and I long for the noise and bustle and pace of a busier world at times (getting away from it all isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, particularly not when you get this far away). 

One of my dearest friends (who remembers not to sound in too much of a hurry whenever I call) once told me, ‘it’s still your big toe that hurts’’.  

And when I’m lonely, it really does. It stings like hell and makes me forget that living in an Outpost absolutely isn’t the most difficult thing to cope with in the world.  

Even if it sometimes feel like it.    

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