Saffa Dinner

Alright. After my rant yesterday, the weather got better. And I was watching television and some advertisement came on and it reminded me that SH had brought me some American food stuff that I had meant to pick up when I attended the dinner.

So I texted and asked if it was still okay for me to come, at least so I could pick up the stuff. So she called me back and expressed a desire for me to come. And I was like fine, but if I am feeling unsociable then I'm just going to leave before I'm a drag on the evening. Which I thought was a fair sort of compromise after everything.

So 6pm saw me headed off to Highgate. Which took ages. But that's not really important to the story.

The evening was fine, and I ended up staying until the end. And R's friends were nice enough, if not a bit insular and protected. I felt like I wasn't really in London anymore. It was very apparent that I was in 'the suburbs' even if to an untrained American eye it might look just as much city as anything else.

But no, what sort of weirded me out the most was the insular quality of all these South Africans. One of them asked me about Hackney, "Oh- is there are large American community there?". I didn't even understand that question.

"Um.... no." I replied.

At which point the conversation took this other turn where the Saffas expressed this fascination with anyone who would just move without a community to move to. These people... they were all basically from the same neighborhood in South Africa. They all went to the same schools. Had the same teachers. And it was like they were just uprooted and transplanted into North London. All their friends were other South Africans, all from the same neighborhood, and here they were in London, but they all just hang out with each other. Frankly, it was really strange and maybe slightly claustrophobic.

I guess I just don't have any way of comparing my ex-pat experience to theirs. I moved for completely different reasons. I moved without a safety net. Maybe some of them find the closeness as constraining as it is comforting. I don't know. I guess part of me hopes so. Overall though, I really felt it was just a bit weird.

Still, I guess I'm glad things ended alright with SH and there weren't any feelings of annoyance or hostility by the time the evening had past. So really that's the most important thing. The Saffas were just a strange sort of side note.