I grew up in Mitchells Plain, and although my family had lived through the Group Areas Act, coming from District Six and being part of the forced removals, Mitchells Plain was never a place of torture for me.

It was home. It was my entire world.

When I finished matric and started venturing outside of Mitchells Plain, it felt strange.

In 1999, something even stranger happened. I travelled to Europe for three months on a Euro Visa.

My three friends and I had romanticised the  Europe experience in our minds for years before we — well,  I — left to go. 

It was all about the music and the culture and the glossy pictures. Greek islands, the Tuscan Valley, all of those things intrigued us.

But one by one, they pulled out. One had a girlfriend, another got a new job, another got cold feet.

I had been saving for years, and something inside me told me that I had to go. Somehow, I had to make that journey.

In June 1999, I went.

To say I had a bit of a culture shock when I got out of the plane the first time is an understatement. I was completely overwhelmed.

I mean, London is a big city compared to  Mitchells Plain. It took me a good couple of days just to catch my breath. And then the fun started.

For the first time, I began to understand just how normal we all are. We have different languages, different countries, cultures, and histories. And yet, people are people.

We laugh. We cry. We fall in love. We get angry. We worry about our children. We want to be happy. We want to belong.

I wanted to see the world through different eyes. I wanted to understand people from the inside, rather than simply understanding where they came from.

I learned that no matter where you are on the planet, people are fundamentally people. But my people are South African.

One day, when I was feeling lonely and standing outside a train station,  I heard, “Man, ek is nou gatvol!” And I was like, aah, that’s Afrikaans, that’s so lekker!

I walked up to him and I said, “Ja. It’s baie lekker om Afrikaans te hoor. Dit is die eerste keer in maande!”

We ended up having a beer and a chat, because he was  gatvol of the European experience and ready to go home.

That’s the special thing about South Africans. We are always ready for a beer and a chat, wherever we are.

After returning from Europe, I realised I couldn’t move back in with my parents. I never expected to feel that way, but I had changed.

A friend of mine was going through a divorce (he had married quite young), and we decided to move in together in Observatory.

Around the same time, I was starting a comedy career that would eventually take me around the world and allow me to experience more incredible things than I could ever have imagined as a boykie from Mitchells Plain.

Somewhere around my fourth or fifth year in Observatory, I walked into a little café called Café Ganesh (It’s still around, by the way. Fantastic food.)

That evening, I met a young woman named Katrin.

I was stuck at one end of a table against a wall, and she was on the other end. I had some friends, and she had some friends over.

Eventually both groups left, and it was just Katrin and me.

I asked her, “Sorry, do you mind if I just squeeze by?” And she said, “Ja! I do mind!” in her German way. 

I sat there for another half an hour trying to figure out how I was going to leave the table. That’s how we met.

We got along like a house on fire from the beginning. We started spending more and more time together and, before long, we were a couple.

What still amazes me is how quickly we became so close, considering how different our backgrounds were.

Katrin was from Speyer in Germany and was studying in Heidelberg. I was from Mitchells Plain.

My childhood home was all brass and doilies. Hers was Ikea and Bang & Olufsen. She was taking violin and piano lessons while I was throwing stones and burning tyres.

But the stuff that matters matters. We love the same kind of music. We love Observatory, which the locals call Obs. We love each other. And we love to laugh.

Music has always been a big part of it and we have range. Everything from Bossa Nova from the 60s, funk from the 80s and now Mano Chao and Stan Getz.

Jack, now in his late teens, has started to find his feet with music, and he has exactly the same taste as we do.

So we are dusting off the only vinyls and CDs, and while he is finding new music, we are re-bonding over it all again. It’s once again the soundtrack to our lives.

Comedy is another thread that holds us together and has been there since the day we met.

The Armchair is an institution in Obs for live performances. It became the centre of the universe for us.

I was there every Sunday evening, and it evolved to the point when I wasn’t just on stage, we were producing acts.

This evolved naturally into us opening a Comedy Club in the Waterfront. Music and comedy. That has always been the bond.

Our lives have not been perfect — not by any stretch of the imagination.

But we are still here.

We are still living in this beautiful suburb called Observatory, where people are just people, and where you come from matters a little less than who you are.

We have been here for 26 years now.

But ultimately I don’t think it’s about the music you listen to, the people you hang out with, the hobbies you share, or even the things you have in common.

I think what has kept Katrin and me together is friendship, mutual respect, and an appreciation for the different perspectives and experiences that each of us brings to our relationship. And laughter.

Perhaps that is what I learned on that trip to Europe all those years ago.

We are all different. And we are all the same.

I can’t imagine my universe without her.