Strange feelings

I'm starting to feel sick in my stomach.

Boarding-school training. Shove the emotions to the back of my mind.

I'm supposed to return home in 10 days time. To pack up the house.
And what.
And sell it?
Rent it?
What? The copper price has crashed. Noone has any money.
And what do we do with the servants and the dog? Seriously.
Just cast them aside?!?!

Last time we were home, we already had to tell dad's oldest employee that we didnt need him any longer. 47 years. I felt like a cad. Phiri stood there, jaw clenching, writhing the sinews in his temples. An old man, steeling the tears. His whole life was working for dad.
And now dad was gone..
I went to the bottom verandah afterwards and cried my eyes out. My soul wrenched from my chest as if I didnt deserve to own one.

Oh god. I feel sick.

This has been our home for over 50 years. Built by dad just 2 years after he started his own civil engineering company.
I'm African..
and yet I'm not. But I dont know why I'm not. And I dont know why I dont feel European. My mother is English, Scottish & Irish - my dad Scottish & Dutch Jewish blood, his mother born in South Africa and him too. What does that make me?

This is the only house I've known. I know every inch of it. I've hidden deep in the garden playing hide and seek, hidden so well that noone found me, until I got bored and came to find them.

Sat on the edge of the pool, no armbands, no minder, no-one about... and defying death, taught myself how to swim. I've surfaced beside a snake and experienced walking on water.
I've pushed my pet chicken around in my dolls pram.
Been through curfews, solar eclipses, one party states and new found democracy.
Been taught how to iron by the houseboy.
Watched him polish the floor, dancing with the brush under one foot and the cloth under the other.
Collected caterpillars for the garden boy
Heard sweet African songs long faded in my memory
Crawled deep inside the bougainvillea hedge,
careered high over the trees on my blue swing, made just for me.
Lips and feet black from mulberries.
Fed dreaded pawpaw to the dogs.
Listened to straw coloured fruit bats squabbling in the fig tree.
Come home to blood all over the house when dad was beaten to an inch of his life by bandits.
And woken by the sound of gunshots or sirens, or scary sounds in the dark night;
or slept solidly as my arm rested against the burglar wire, alarm blaring away.

Heard drums playing deep into the night
laughed at my dog catching flying ants in the kitchen
and laughed again each time I returned from boarding school to find the house had shrunk.
Had power cuts, and phone cuts, and water cuts,
Heard Comrade Mr President on the news
And sat in silence whilst dad listened to the BBC.

I've lived and breathed this house. It was the only place in the world where I felt I belonged.
Before the town she was in became this horrid, polluted, dishevelled place. A place noone wanted to be in. Full of uncouth miners paid disgusting salaries which they squirreled away. We sold the company houses and the office and the horses and the plane and the farm...

and now...?

Am I the only one who's heart is screaming?
The others seem nonchalant.
It makes me sick.

Just bring dad back. Thats the solution. Change time. Change it all.