She Spreads Her Wings In The Hopes To Fly

Do you always see yourself living in your current town/city? How many times have you packed up and moved, and just how far away from your original hometown? Today I'm answering whether or not I always see myself living in my current town, and the answer is.... No. Definitely not.

I was born and raised in a very small farming community in the Midlands in Kwa-Zula Natal, South Africa. My extremely miniscule little community has always been home to me. It has shown me what it means to be loved and to live free. It's the kind of community where;

• Everyone's Dad is a dairy farmer.
• Their Mom is a stay at home momma and does the farm's books towards Pay Day.
• You call everyone's granny "Gogo".
• You know every nook and cranny of everyone's home.
• After school the kids hop onto the back of Dad's bakkie and do the whole Titanic thing with their arms and pretend they're flying as Dad drives around the beautiful farm.
• Your school teachers were also your family friends.
• Everyone heads to the Country Club on Friday night for dinner which is prepared by a different family of the community each week.
• All the kids are in the same lift club for school.
• You went to the same Junior School as your Gran and your Dad, and to top it all off, you and your Dad were taught by the same darling Mrs Kelly (true story, folks!).
• It is guaranteed that each family that lives there had parents, grandparents and even great-great-great multiplied by a bagazillion parents that lived there too.

Two pieces of school work that my Dad and I did while we were taught by the same teacher - him when he was in Grade 5 and I when I was in Grade 1.

While my community is all this and so much more, and while it will always be my favourite place on Earth, I don't see myself ever living there on my own. My parents will always stay there because that is where our farms are, but we have a house in Hilton, Pietermaritzburg too, just because sometimes my beautiful community gets too small.

My community is a farming community, and unless I fall in love with a farmer from the area, I will not be staying there. My dream is to travel, practise Psychology and raise a family. I have wings that desperately need to be spread. I feel that there is so much more to life than my little hometown. There is so much that I am craving to explore. Remaining in my hometown would mean not being able to practise my passion of Psychology.

Who knows what will happen? I would love to return to it permanently one day, maybe when I'm old and grey. While I doubt I will ever live in my hometown again under a roof that is not my parents', I doubt I'll go very far. My entire family is here, I love my country and I am happy. And that's what counts, isn't it?