Welcome to this week’s edition of the Five Minute Friday link-up!

Learn more about the link-up and how it works here.

This week’s FMF writing prompt is: VIBE

Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO. 

I know this isn’t a typical writing prompt for our weekly link-up, but I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes you just gotta have a little fun, am I right?

Besides, as I type this, my youngest is home unexpectedly after I thought he would be out-of-state all summer, his friends and fellow soccer players from high school are in my living room watching the Mexico v. South Korea World Cup match, my Instagram algorithm is feeding me a diet of Knicks parade videos and updates on the opening ceremony of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. And while there are certainly plenty of horrible things going on in the world every single day, today feels like a good day to celebrate.

As I hear the chatter in the other room and the commentators on TV, I’m transported back to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. My family and I lived in Cape Town at the time, and let me tell you, it was a vibe. I even wrote about it in my memoir, A Place to Land: A Story of Longing and Belonging.

And since I’m in a good mood today, below an excerpt from the book (not included in my five-minute timer) . . . 😉

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Excerpt from A Place to Land: A Story of Longing and Belonging . . .

Toward the end of the waiting game to get into a larger home, the 2010 FIFA World Cup was held in South Africa. For months leading up to the event, the hype escalated. A brand-new stadium was built in Green Point for the occasion. Advertisements popped up everywhere. Airfare skyrocketed. Some people even moved out of their houses temporarily to rent their space to the influx of tourists. I’d never been a die-hard soccer fan, so I didn’t understand all the fuss.

Then came the opening ceremony.

Our flat was in the hub of the city’s central district, and life got loud. People blew on plastic vuvuzelas day and night, up and down the streets, hanging their heads out of minibus taxis. More vehicles were decked out with flags than not—most proudly supporting South Africa, but many sporting flags from other countries.

In no time, I caught the bug. I couldn’t avoid the vibe surging in the city. I became a crazy person. We even borrowed a television just so I could watch the games. I drew up a handmade bracket and taped it to the kitchen door, filling in team names, winners, and scores every time there was a match. My veins pumped patriotic pride.

Then came the moment of identity crisis—if the U.S. played South Africa, who would I support? By then, I’d lived in Cape Town for eight years. I thought about how I could finally stand in the grocery store and no longer labor to do conversions in my head, South African rand to U.S. dollars, or milliliters to cups or ounces. I could just look at the price tag and know whether it was a good deal or not. More than that, I knew what brands I trusted and wanted to buy.

Nobody warned me that it would take years of living in a foreign country before I finally felt like I sort of knew what I was doing. I even started to realize that my memory was jumbling up my country categories, as if my brain had compartments for “American things” and “South African things.” After living in Cape Town for so long, I started to forget whether I’d known about certain items and brands before moving to Africa. Did I know about Colgate before Cape Town? Yes. Did I know about Opel cars? I couldn’t remember. It was somewhat disconcerting, this melding of memories. The lines of home had blurred, and I couldn’t tell which walls belonged to which house.

After some deliberation, the scales of my heart tipped in favor of South Africa’s national soccer team, Bafana Bafana. There’s nothing like two months of nonstop blowing vuvuzelas to solidify a girl’s identity in a place. My love for South Africa was sealed. I may not be one of hers by birth, but she adopted me as her own.

End of excerpt. 

Click here to read the rest of the book or find the ebook on Kindle.

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Join the link-up with your own five-minute freewrite on the writing prompt, VIBE, then visit your link-up neighbor to read their post and leave an encouraging comment: