False sense of security

I guess I suffer from it, this false sense that everything is safe. But now and then it gets blown sky-high.

This weekend one of our lecturers was walking on the beach during the day, in a well-peopled area - and was stabbed a number of times! He's now in hospital. Fortunately they missed everything critical to his survival....

It happened at a place my son and I often go to, where more likely than not I sit alone while he jumps waves. Suddenly I'm not sure we should be doing that, and I'm likely to consider all other beach-goers with suspicion. Just down the sand is a place in the dunes where a number of murders have happened - the place we walk through bushes to reach the beach at. If I hadn't bought the newspaper on the day it was highlighted, I would have been innocent of that knowledge.

I walk in the dark each morning, unafraid. I've walked alone up the mountain with the dogs and felt no fear. Others are not so "lucky" (clueless?). They fear for their lives on the mountain and in the dark, and wouldn't chance it.

You know, I love South Africa. But the realization that muggings, rapes, stabbings, violent robberies, hijackings etc. happen regularly just down the road makes me want to get out. When I visit my grandparents on their farm near Pretoria, we all get handed a gun to put under our pillows at night (I'm low-ranking so mine is a mere pellet-gun instead of the rifle or shotgun, but I've been told to "aim for the eyes" if anyone unwanted turns up...). It's a fact of life for them, this living in fear of attack. They've had to shoot at folk trying to break in and do who-knows-what to them a few times - lucky escapes. Neighbours have been murdered, people they know have been attacked on arriving home. It's freaky, scary stuff.

Right now, as much as I love where I live, I'm afraid to plan a future here...