75. Ithaca, 2000 - Cayuga's waters

In which Eleanor goes to the US.

Eleanor visits Ithaca and falls in love…again.

Eleanor

As I crest the hill, I just have to pull over to the side of the road and take it in.

Below me, in the soft glaciated valley, a long thin lake stretches out to the north, its midnight blue waters, sparkling in the sun, are ruffled by the breeze. Cayuga Lake, it's called, one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. Sail boats, tiny from my vantage point, dot its surface, their white sails like summer snowflakes against the deep blue.

And the green. The green! It’s iridescent. Green is everywhere, in every shade. Deepest dark forest greens of the conifers. Bright emerald greens of the deciduous trees. The brilliant lime green of shrubs and lawns. I stand there captivated, oblivious to the shush of the cars behind me, and breathe it all in. The lushness, the blue, the green, the aliveness of the landscape. It feels like I’m drinking liquid gold, the air is so rich with light and life.

To the west, on the uplands, fields and pastures checkerboard the deep green of the forest. Below me is the town, buildings and church spires poking up like spring daffodils in the sea of green. And above the town, to the east, the map tells me, is Cornell University—my last stop on this quick tour of the US I decided to take before finalizing my decision about which universities to apply to.

As I come into town, I lose my way and find myself next to a waterfall. And then another. Again I get out of the car, and this time I walk to the water’s edge. A fisherman is standing in the river, casting his line. Above him a waterfall tumbles, wide and white. Ithaca Falls, the map tells me. I study the map again. There are yet more waterfalls in the area. Water is everywhere here.

And before I even get to the University, my mind is made up. This. I want this. This lushness and greenness, this water and waterfalls. This is everything the Middle East is not. It’s like I’ve come to another planet made up of green and water.

As I stand next to the river—or creeks as they call them here—at the bottom of the waterfall, I am suddenly back at the farm, standing at the bottom of our little waterfall. This is so different from the farm and the majestic beauty of the Drakensberg. Yet even in its much softer, gentler beauty of rolling hills and glaciated valleys, Ithaca reminds me of the farm and Underberg. It has that same serene sense of place—a place where you can tuck yourself into its folds and feel hugged by its calm self-assuredness.

And in a breath, as I stand here next to the river, San Francisco is relegated to a distant second place. It had been my first stop on this tour. It had to be. It was where it had all begun, after all. It had been weird—and fun—to see where I had spent the first few months of my life. The hospital staff had been so sweet and helpful, finding my name in the birth register. As I stood there reading my name, slightly faded now with time, shivers went up and down my spine, and I felt a pleasant, tingly feeling in my body. This is where I had drawn the first breaths of my life.

Later, I found myself on the exact spot where Dad had taken the photo of Mum, pregnant with me, and a two year old Tig looking impish and wind blown, with the Golden Gate bridge in the background. I can see that photo still in my mind’s eye. Mum’s brown and white poncho is hiding her bulge, but she looks radiant, her lustrous dark hair tousled and gleaming in the California sun. I felt the same shivers and tingles as I stood there, the wind tousling my long dark hair, as I had in the hospital. I had been here, literally here, before I was even born. It was a different feeling than the awed sensation I’ve so often had in Jerusalem that I could, literally, be walking where Jesus could have walked. This was a more intimate feeling. Like I had come home, to the very beginning of me.

I know the gang in Jerusalem is puzzled about why I want to leave the diplomatic corps in the first place, and then focus on the United States for an MBA in the second place. I’ve tried to explain, but I’m not sure any non-South African can really get it.

It's been a little over six years since I stood at the Union Buildings watching Mandela be inaugurated. Changes under Mbeki are accelerating. They are necessary. And for me personally, as a white woman, when my posting ends in a year, I am looking at returning to Pretoria, becoming a desk officer and not knowing when, or if, I will be posted again. André has already left. Sizwe says he’s thinking about it. The mutterings of resentment from the older white diplomats are getting louder. I don’t want to become them: a bitter white person, anchored to an older, hateful time. Us younger diplomats had entered with such idealism and high hopes. I am still proud to call myself a South African—except when Mbeki is spouting some nonsense about AIDS¹—but the honeymoon with Mandela is over now and reality is upon us. By simple accident of birth I have options to find a life outside of South Africa, and not take up a space that is better filled by someone else who better represents South Africa. And as I don’t really know what I want to do next, an MBA seems as good a way to figure that out as any, while also progressing my education and giving me more career options.

After my tour of Cornell University, I drive myself down to the lake and dip my feet and hands into its bracing freshness. As Cayuga’s waters lap around my ankles, Ithaca’s green curls a tendril around my heart and gently tugs. Ithaca is the antithesis of the Middle East in every respect. And that is precisely its appeal. But it’s also just serenely itself, ready to tuck one into its folds if one wants to stay, but equally happy if one is just passing on through.

The following day I fly back to Jerusalem, hope and a plan winging me back.

Ithaca has made the choice for me. All I have to do is apply. And hope.

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Bonus Material

• Father Jerry and Francois’s letters…for another perspective on Elle, and in which we learn about the actual work Eleanor does (but rarely talks about).

1. Mbeki, South Africa’s second democratically elected President, started to criticize the scientific consensus that HIV is the cause of AIDS shortly after his election to the presidency in 1999. Throughout the eight years of his presidency, Mbeki continued to express sympathy for HIV/AIDS denialism, and instituted policies denying antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients.