South Africa has a smell to it. It’s in the earth. It’s in the air. It rides ahead of the thunderstorms when the dry season breaks. It’s in the game parks and lodges and the smoke lifting out of the braais and the grassfires.

It smells nothing like my home: the San Luis Valley of Colorado. The forest of chico brush that blankets the floor of the Valley has its own scent. You don’t smell it when you stand in the brush looking towards the mountains. You smell it when you’re walking in them and the branches rub against you. You smell it when the monsoon season brings rain and the chicos rejoice.

How did I become and American expat in Johannesburg? I married a woman that, as the locals say, has The Power. The red sunsets, red soil, red grass called her back. It was time for her to return and in August of 2018, we moved us and our three cats from the U.S. to Jozi.

This blog is a place for me to tell you about my journey that stretches beyond the chicos all the way to the back of beyond; or, as the Shona call it, the bundu.

"Until death it is all life"-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

Jason Lovato is a poet, teacher, and sometimes photographer in Johannesburg, South Africa

He holds a BA in English from Adams State University in Alamosa, CO and an MFA in Poetry from Antioch University Los Angeles.

Currently, he is an adjunct professor at Adams State University in their Prison Program. He teaches a poetry workshop class to incarcerated students throughout the U.S