I live in South Africa

I finally feel like I live in South Africa. Sure I know I have been living here for months now, going to the food market and dentist, getting mail, driving on the left side of the road. Doing all the mundane everyday things that people do when they actually live somewhere. But I am not sure if I really felt like I was doing them "at home". I still thought of the US of A as home and had been feeling as if I was a character in a play about my life living in South Africa. But a board game in Kariega made me realize that I do indeed live in South Africa, that this is is not a play, and South Africa is now my home.

The game is called 30 Seconds and it is a combination of password, jeopardy and trivial pursuit. You play in teams and there are cards with five answers on them. People, places, things. You take turns reading the answers and trying to get your partner to guess as many answers on the card as they can in 30 seconds by giving them clues. You advance around the board on the number of right answers. For instance for London Bridge, you would say. "in the nursery rhyme I was 'falling down, falling down.'"

The version we played in Kariega was most definitely a South African version as a large percentage of the answers on the cards referred to obscure (to the outside world) South African people, places, and things. I played the game with a bunch of volunteers at Kariega who were definitely not South African. They all hailed from the UK with another American thrown in. Most of them did not recognize the South African references and could not come up with a clue to give their partner.

I would not have recognized them myself six months ago, but I found that I now knew practically all of the South African answers except for maybe the ones that referred to South African sports teams and players. (But I am not all that familiar with American sports teams and players either so that doesn't really count.) It made me realize I am feeling more South African or at least more "at home" in South Africa.

And while I probably still couldn't pass the South African citizenship test, I can play a mean 30 Seconds. That is something.