Why I am leaving South Africa (again) and don’t plan to ever move back

 

G39FXE The Battle of Blood River. The charge of the Boers to avenge Dingaan’s Daag. Date: 16th December 1838

I have spent my life cursed with a morbid imagination and, to make matters worse, it’s an unusually vivid and active one. 

As a child, I was convinced that my parents were imposters who took off their human skins at night and that I was the subject of a weird experiment by a race of spider people.

Even now, my first thoughts in most situations tend to be dark and treacherous (to my mental health at least). Someone is 15 minutes late to an appointment? They’ve obviously died in a car crash, been hijacked and shot, or are being raped to death in a tik den somewhere. A strange sound at night is never just the house settling, always a gang of depraved, murderous burglars coming to ram an AK47 up my innocent butthole. These scenarios enter my mind unbidden, played out in lurid detail. 

South African ‘Craft’ Brewers Can Suck My Balls

I love beer. It is not a casual ‘I like a few brews on the weekend’ kind of love either. I love beer with a deep, obsessive passion. Over the last decade, I have travelled to 25 countries, sampling beers, visiting breweries, talking to locals and discovering the sheer, spectacular breadth of the brewing art. I also brew my own beer on a small but (at least in my opinion) highly skilled level.

Five great Estonian mysteries

As I head deeper into my second year in Estonia, a certain normalization and recalibration is occurring. Things I originally found strange and odd have become normal and, in extreme cases, comforting.

Five Estonian surprises

I expected many things when I moved to Estonia. I was ready for the digital state, the beauty of Tallinn, free public transport, short winter days and lots of pork and potatoes. But here are a few things that left me very pleasantly surprised.

2016 – The year in review

Well, what a spectacular shitstorm that was. The horses have been saddled, the smell of liniment and hay hangs in the air while War, Famine, Death and the Antichrist finish their last beers before saddling up.

In Estonia, the customer is always an asshole

Quiet time at an Estonian supermarket

“Tere”, I greeted the woman behind the counter in my best ‘I only know one word’ Estonian.

Her eyes flickered up at me momentarily but her expression did not change, nor did her body language. She might as well have been holding a placard bearing the words “Fuck off” instead of her mobile phone.

Surprise! You’re sick. Guess what? It never ends.

There are some things no one prepares you for when you move from one country to another. Some are small, like making peace with the fact that you no longer keep chutney in the house or that you will never, ever have to drink shit beer again.

Move to Estonia, they said. It will be easy, they said.

At Tiskre beach

Arrival

In early December 2015, while rather casually considering applying for Estonian e-Residency, I came across a job ad that seemed perfect for me. The problem was, as a South African, I held out absolutely zero hope that I’d even receive a response to my CV submission, let alone make it through a lengthy interview process.

Braaing through the grips of rigor mortis

As a committed carnivore, the lack of quality meat is proving to be one serious barrier to my enjoyment of life in Estonia. I used to love pork, but I now realise that I loved the variety that pork offered more than the meat itself. In South Africa, I would probably feast on the swine at most twice a week (excluding bacon, which I can eat several times a day). Now that I am forced to eat it five times a week the novelty is wearing rather thin.

Rambling thoughts on driving, the law, and slow motion badassery

Why would two countries with such similar histories develop such divergent approaches to law and order?