Everything in Extra Large

When we got married, my husband and I moved from our small hometown in the East of Johannesburg to Randburg which is a much larger suburb of greater Johannesburg. I remember how overwhelmed I felt back then. Everything seemed larger and busier than what we were used to in the East Rand. There was more traffic and larger shops and bigger houses. I struggled for months to orientate myself. But little did I know how small my perspective was…

I knew emigrating to Vancouver, Canada was going to cause the same level of distress, but what I hadn’t bargained on was how overwhelmingly big everything would be. Everything in Vancouver is extra large. It makes Johannesburg look like a small town. Even the suburb Coquitlam that we settled in, is like a mini-city. Back home you could drive to your nearest Woolies, or Spar down the road or quickly pop into the garage if you needed something in a rush. In Coquitlam, there are no small shops. There are only huge stores with layouts that stretch a whole street block and aisles that go on forever. Just have a look at some photos below.

What this experience reminded me of, was how easy it is to lose perspective when everything is available in abundance. We often hear the statistics: “Half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day. And 900 million people cannot read or write…“, but how many of us actually GET that?! Get the scary reality that in certain parts of the worlds, people have so much abundance that they are drowning in choices. These large superstores are enough to drive anyone to tears. There is just so much choice, that you literally walk from aisle to aisle for hours on end without making sense of it all. At least that was our reality. Every outing to the store, is a 2- or 3-hour affair and we arrive back home with whatever we made sense of before we became too overwhelmed and gave up. Nothing makes you long for simplicity as much as living in a place where abundance is taken too far.

In South Africa our lives were much simpler. We had choice. But just enough choice. And every day around you there were reminders of those who did not have what you have. Some people get accustomed to the abundance of a first world country. For me, it is a reminder of what is wrong with the world. I come from a place where water is scarce and some people are at real risk of dying from thirst or hunger. And now I live in a country that has one of the biggest fresh water supplies in the world and some of the cleanest tap water in the world. Every time I open a tap, I think of home and of how much my country is suffering and of how much we still need to learn.

Despite its beauty, its efficiency and its abundance, my new home is still missing something… a certain hardiness and humour, a certain level of humility and hope that is so characteristic of my old home.