Changing seasons

I've been in the sticks for 6 months now.
I've watched the seasons change and my life change.
The first few weeks here it rained constantly, massive summer thunderstorms plagued us weekly and everything was green and lush; new and vibrant - in a sense thats how I felt when I first arrived here - green, very green. Not having a clue what was normal, what to expect or how to survive life in the sticks. GREEN. NEW. STORMS; Storms that I had to ride out until they cleared and I was less afraid of life in the sticks.
Then the season changed. It suddenly became colder in the morning, colder at night.. but during the day still so hot. The leaves turned to bright reds and oranges; The skies became less dramatic; A sense of resignation moved in - almost that nature had resigned itself to that the fact that winter was coming and that that is how it is. And the same can be said of me.. I finally resigned myself to being here, to being rooted here - if just for year - and that I too would change as the seasons changed. My life settled in and became less dramatic; less surprising. This is how it is the sticks- yes, you do need to drive 45km in order to buy decent meat and have a wider variety of food at your disposable. Yes, you do need to be on call on the weekend, even though there is nothing happening and there is nothing to do. Yes, you are far away from home. That is how it is and you will get used to it. And its almost as if the warmth of the afternoons reminds you that there is comfort here, there is happiness, there is friendship and there are things to discover.

And now its winter. It stays mostly cold in the mornings and at night but it still warms up during the day and the sun comes out. It is fire season. Everything is dry; everything smells burnt; everything is brown - except for the "evergreen" forests. The field next to my house burnt down last week.. and the field across from my house and actually all around me there are fires. But I looked very closely at those burnt patches today and I saw new green shoots of grass piercing through the black burnt ground. I smiled to myself. Because you see in a way, this year has been my own type of fire- burning away at all the old and faded parts of myself, all the negative thoughts, all the past mistakes, all the things I struggle to forgive myself for, all of it needed to be burnt away, so that I could see myself in a different light, in a more positive way and allow shoots of happiness, of strength, of self-insight to grow. And I can see those little green sparks of life now and these past 6 months of changing seasons are all worth it now.

The first words of the local language, "Swati", that I learnt were - "Donsu moya, ubambe, ukeepe". They mean - breathe in, hold it in, breathe out. And this is what I've been doing every day. Breathing in the good, the positive, the discoveries, holding in the love, the hope, the joy, the laughter, breathing out all that is destructive, all that is old, all that is negative. and that is how you survive in the sticks. day by day, taking each moment as it comes, breathing in and breathing out and holding in that which you know is beneficial. And thats how this place is changing me, thats how the people here are showing me how to live. Stripped bare of all the luxuries that city life affords one and showing me that even in the harshest of climates, even when life doesn't hand you what you want and things go wrong and people that you love go through difficult times and seasons change unexpectedly, life will find a way to bring you something new and something beautiful and you just have to keep breathing.

So enough pedantic musings, here are some pretty photos.