We are spending our last few days in South Africa in my husband’s home town of Durban, which, compared to the Mediterranean climate of Cape Town, feels like a more authentic African experience. The air is thick with humidity, the frangipani trees are in full blossom, and at the local park yesterday my daughter and I nearly got bitten by a female monkey when we got too close to her baby that had tumbled off a low branch.

“Can you imagine a monkey falling out of a tree in Central Park?” I wondered aloud to my gang. With its fabulous array of playgrounds and manicured fields, Central Park feels light-years away. But as I push my girls in the rickety tire swings, alongside two other mothers covered completely in burkas, this is where my mind wanders. I think of myself next week, pushing my girls in the Ancient Playground, or playing in the Hippo Park, alongside mothers — or maybe baby sitters — dressed, without a doubt, in Western clothing.

There is a homogeneity to life in New York that I find both comforting and disturbing. When I am in South Africa for more than a few months, I can’t wait to return to my life in New York where my children and I are protected from seeing some of life’s harsher realities. I know it’s a luxury to be able to return to such a cloistered world, but I’m tired of trying to explain to my children that I don’t know where the mentally retarded young man who wanders in front of our apartment sleeps each night. I don’t know how to explain to them that the person literally scratching his face off in the alley off Cape Town’s Main Road is addicted to a drug called tik, a new narcotic that is even more addictive than crack cocaine.

One of my son’s eyes well up with tears each time we pass a busy intersection near our apartment, where a woman sells a magazine whose proceeds go to support homeless people. She wanders among the cars while her son, not even 2 years old, sits on a small island in the middle of heavy traffic, barely clothed, fiddling with a nearly empty Coke bottle.

“I want to give him my goodie bag,” he says as we return from a birthday party. We motion for the woman to come over and give her the sweets.

It isn’t easy trying to help my young children understand what it means when there is a sticker on a classroom that reads: “This is an AIDS-friendly classroom.” In South Africa, you regularly see people dying of AIDS. The disease is so prevalent here that HIV-negative Africans try to be on the heavy side, so as not to be mistakenly stigmatized by the disease.

In the past few months I’ve seen more hunchbacks, amputees, and homeless people than I can count. I’ve explained to my children why it’s impolite to stare, but they can’t help themselves as we walk by people with hairlips, people who have large moles, and people who have no teeth.

In supermarkets, shopping malls, playgrounds, restaurants and chess tournaments, we’ve lived alongside Indians and Africans and Afrikaaners. We’ve picked up bits and pieces of Zulu and Afrikaans, both of which are included in the South African anthem. We have admired beautiful saris, exotic African headdresses, and austere burkas.

New York will seem downright sterile by comparison. New Yorkers, in general, regardless of race and socioeconomic status, are thin, well-dressed, and wellgroomed. There are fewer homeless people, few hawkers trying to sell you goods, and few people with glaring physical disabilities. The city might have been the original melting pot, but after a few months in South Africa I think it will now feel more like the melted pot.

I’m reluctant to admit it, but I think I will welcome the return to such uniformity. I’m grateful that for part of the year we are forced to confront the reality of living in a country that dangles between the first and third world. I’m relieved that my children see with their own eyes that there is so much poverty and disease outside their sheltered lives. This more complicated world — in some very small way — belongs to them, not nearly as much as their world in New York, I know. But I know they have seen another reality that is tucked away in their hearts and minds.

On a lighter note, near the end of the two-hour flight to Durban from Cape Town, my boys — I’m still not sure which one — smashed a stink bomb. Remember those? As you can imagine, this was not entirely appreciated by some of the nearby passengers. I can only be grateful that we were surrounded by young men in their 20s who thought the situation was unfortunate, but humorous.

The only thing standing between my family and New York right now is 17 hours of pure torture in the air. At least I’ve located and detonated all the stink bombs. At least I hope I have.

sarasberman@aol.com