“Brother, I want to go home. It’s starting to affect how I think”… The look in his eyes as he says this kindles a dormant ember that has lingered on the heath I often sit besides within myself in quiet contemplation. I do not often visit that place of memory and angst. I have tried to live each day as it comes, and each moment as it demands. The feelings my friend shares with me remind me that I miss home too. Not the socioeconomic and political state of home, but the connections and the people. Ever since I was a little child I split my time between two countries. This continued until I was an adult, and then I left home entirely for university, where I met this friend. We’re from opposite ends of Africa and yet we have so much in common. Twelve years of friendship has taught me that. I’ve learnt above all else it is the people you carry with you who make home what you remember it to be. We’ve been scattered far afield for quite some time, sustained by long phone calls home, and the morsels social media affords of those homely familiarities.
I learnt of a Welsh word recently, ‘hiraeth’. Collins dictionary described it as a ‘nostalgic longing for a place which can never be revisited’. In my mind, many of the things that used to make home (the family house in my hometown, and my home country) home aren’t all there any more. Only fractions remain. I feel like I was flung from the nest a long time ago, and I’m still somehow falling. As it stands home is something I need to make anew for myself, but haven’t started crafting in earnest. However, I have a foundation. It shall all work out I believe. And though I won’t always mention it, I’ll often feel like I too need to go home. To reconnect, recharge, and realign my course to the things that matter most.
T.T.
Poetry by Tsungai 
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