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This country is going to give me a drinking problem.
Alcohol has never had a permanent place in my brain. When it's there, it's there. When it's not, I hardly give it a passing thought. Sometimes, in a 3am state of 'When Am I Getting My Life Together' I think about what it would be like to be one of those swanky people in a three piece suit who waltzes up to a bar after a business deal and orders a J Daniels straight up with no rocks, because rocks are for losers.
In actual fact the void between that scenario and my current one is so vast that when I had to think of a whiskey name for the sentence above this one, I had to google it.
The point of my story is that I never think of alcohol except when it is immediately present in the situation I find myself in.
In saying that I do not mean I cannot appreciate it. One of my most favourite things to do is make a gin and whatever-is-in-the-house and drink it with no one around to disturb a good wade through whatever shitstorm of irrational thoughts my brain has concocted for the day.
But here, in South Africa, it's a little different.
I am not used to having three separate keys for three separate doors to get into my house. Only to find that when I have successfully matched each key to a door I have to sprint to turn off the alarm that I had to remember to set before I left.
I am not used to people raising their eyebrows when they learn that I am living in a house by myself for a few weeks before new housemates arrive.
I am definitely not used to being scared.
I left South Africa at age 7.
My family didn't flee, which I am now starting to realise is an important fact to bring up when you meet people for the first time. We simply left as a result of my fathers' career. 'A geologist must go where the gold is' he has always said. And so far the gold has been in Tanzania, Perth, and Papua New Guinea.
I haven't spent more than two weeks here for 15 years and slowly but surely it is driving me to an unhealthy resting heart rate and potential alcoholism.
It isn't that I am unused to being safety conscious. The blessing and curse of moving around when you are young is that the travel bug gets you early. At the age of 22 I have travelled to more countries than I can count, often on my own, with a very real understanding of the potential dangers I might face.
It is that I am unused to feeling fear in a place that I must by definition, call home.
Here is also where the above mentioned alcohol comes into play. I have drunk the same amount of booze that you would expect from a slightly prudish 22 year old female. Not a tonne, but definitely more than a thimble.
I have only ever used it once.
I was a bridesmaid at the most terrible wedding of the century. Adding to an already painful situation I had just found out my first love was now in love with someone else. Sitting at the reception I ran through my options. One, fake a migraine and leave, risking my entire friendship with the bride. Two, sit through the entire event in a bathroom stall, analysing every last conversation with above mentioned romantic interest. Three, dig a really deep hole and lie down in it until Spring.
Weighing up the pros and cons suddenly a thought occurred to me. I've always been a happy drunk. I don't cry or get angry, I don't tell secrets or embarrass myself, I'm simply me, but a little more relaxed and a lot less 'thinky'. As if curtains had opened up on a stage I didn't know existed and I understood that there was a way I didn't have to be feeling what I was feeling by drinking. So I did it, I drank for a reason.
It worked.
Not a passing thought was given to my actions that night. In fact, I remember feeling a little proud that the only time I used the bathroom stall was actually when I needed it to pee. I danced, laughed with strangers, talked with old people and the next morning I woke up, and my largely non-existent relationship with strong liquor remained unchanged.
Now for a correction. Since moving back to South Africa to work for an NGO in the Amazing Race of Finding Out What I'm Doing With My Life, I have used alcohol 5 times.
I have lived here for 4 weeks.
I am permanently anxious. I am always thinking.
Did I lock the house? Did I set the alarm? Are all the windows closed? Have I established too much of a pattern by walking to and from work everyday? Is someone watching me? Should I buy pepper spray? 1 in 3 women are raped in this country, what if that's me? How do you defend yourself against a man? Why didn't I lift more weights? Should I have come here? Am I being crazy?
Now I urge you to please, not misunderstand me. I came here of my own volition. This is one of the most beautiful countries on earth, and the people I work with have meant more to me in three weeks than the people I worked with for three years in Australia did.
There is so much good, beauty, warmth, and light. But for someone who hasn't called it her home in 15 years, there is also worry, fear, and paranoia.
So I have established a coping mechanism. I drink gin.
When I get home, after making sure I wasn’t followed, I open the three doors, run to turn off the alarm, make sure the windows that need to be closed are closed. And then I pour myself a stiff gin and tonic to think through the maybes of the day.
Maybe I was being watched, maybe that guy behind me at the ATM wasn’t looking my way, maybe my pattern is too predictable, and maybe it isn’t.
Maybe tomorrow will be better, maybe it will be worse.
I arrived thinking it was beyond bizarre that a waiter would ask me if I required a single or a double shot in my drink. But daily I've come to understand that the 'maybes' of the day sometimes only disappear with a double.
