Scrooge was tormented by the Ghost of Christmas Past, which revealed to him his less than happy and, for the most part, less than savoury past. Fortunately, I am no Scrooge and although the ghosts that emerged during my Christmas at home were, like Scrooge, reminders of how I got to where I am today, they were, unlike Scrooge, pleasant reminders.

Being home, and with my family, after four Christmases away, was everything I expected it to be. The gathering, the noise, the food, the gifts, the reminiscing, seeing people I hadn't seen for years, and a few I had never seen before. And the feeling of being part, of belonging, of where I come from, my past. I was not the only one who noticed this though. Jia Hui said to me at one point, "Your family really love you," and I realised that she was observing my past as keenly as I was feeling it. For her, who I am now, why I think the way I do and do the things I do, was adding up.

This sense was reinforced when we left Johannesburg and drove to the Kruger Park. Instead of staying in the park, I had decided that we would stay at the Wits Rural Facility (WRF) where I lived and worked for six years. Its only 30 kilometres from the Orpen Gate and a lot cheaper than staying in the park. The plan was to drive from WRF to the park for two daily trips. As we arrived at WRF the first person I met was Sakkie Niehaus, an anthropologist, who was also the first person I met when moving to WRF in 1993 and who offered me my first dinner there at his house. His first words were, "Dion? Or am I seeing a ghost?!" And, as is inevitable in such situations, we discussed the past, the work and research we had conducted, the people we both knew, the places we had worked in, and which he was still working in!

Then, on the second day in the park, as we were browsing around one of the stores, I heard, "Dion Delport?" Looking up I saw Thembi, someone I had worked with at WRF. She hugged me and when I introduced Jia Hui, Thembi hugged her as well, seemingly overjoyed at seeing us! It turned out that she had also left WRF and was now working for the Kruger Park. Such a meeting seemed to me at the time as much of a coincidence as it would have been to spot rhinos mating, which we didn't see.

On the morning that we left WRF I took Jia Hui through the village where I had worked and to the school where I had taught and then we drove to the Nelspruit airport to catch our flight to Durban. While waiting for the flight, we sat on a bench and a black man sat down next to us. I didn't take any notice of him, until he said "Dion Delport?" It was Remember, an English teacher who had taught with me at the school that I had shown Jia Hui that morning. Now that felt like seeing rhinos engaging in a threesome! What Jia Hui thought I can only guess at, but it seemed that I had planted operatives around the countryside to appear on cue to impress the socks off her!

At every turn it seemed that I was bumping into ghosts of the past, but instead of haunting me they made the pieces of the puzzle that are me fall into place. I am somewhat different to who I was in the past, but those re-encounters made me feel that I had made a contribution along the way to who I am now.

3 February 2004

Dion Marc Delport

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