Unpacking my suitcase

I have carried this packed suitcase around for five years. More accurately, 10, if we count from 1999.
Every night I would re-pack it again. The next day, I would pick it up. Ready to leave. Each day was the same. I scoured the websites for news. The good news. I developed the habit of sleeping with both my mobile phones on, fully charged, and next to my head on the pillow. Every little "ting-ting" woke me up. I cursed loudly when the stupid adverts came through from the service provider. Every call home, from friends, I listened intently for that encouragement. I wanted to hear them say, please come now. Everything is great. It will be wonderful if you came back. I lengthened the calls, just in case they would say it. Telkom made a small fortune off me.

Today was the day. Tomorrow I would just pick up this suitcase and head for the airport. I carried the suitcase with me on all my travels. Guatemala was a nightmare since I could not roam on my South African mobile for an entire week. Drat! I worried myself sick when I went to visit project areas where there was no network. I was convinced I would miss that vital sms. That all important call. Still I wait.

I have lived in this holding pattern since 1999, the first time I left my home in Harare, Zimbabwe, to come and work in Johannesburg. At the end of my two year contract I strangely accepted another job in the UK. After six months, I fled back home. In 2004 I moved back to South Africa, where I had vowed - rather too loudly to anyone who cared to listen - that I would never ever return. At that time, I rationalized it to myself - and also to those who wondered why I was going back again; oh it was different this time. I was only going so that my son could get everything he needed. You know kids. They just want too much stuff which is no longer available here in Zim. Oh its really because my new employers have moved to Johannesburg. So technically I was being "forced" to move. I really didn't want to. Well, the internet connectivity was much better, and air travel much more direct rather than hop skipping and jumping from Bangkok to Harare via Joburg.
Mmm, I really didn't see myself staying there, no. Not really. I was just here for the job. Give me my Harare any time. On and on I went.

I willed myself to dislike this country, its people, and everything about it. That was easy enough to do. I just rode on the wave of negativity that I found in abundance. Crime! Corruption! Bad governance! The ruling party is just just like our ZANU PF! I wallowed in all of it and comfortably wrapped myself in this blanket of anger and gloom. This was familiar territory. After all, I am from a country where unhappiness is dyed in your wool.

Everything irritated me. Everyone. And they just couldn't get anything right. The locals spoke too loudly, hai! The taxis were a bloody nuisance, with their loud music, their ceaseless tooting for customers outside MY window! My window - which faces Corlett Drive, a busy highway. The doctors here just didn't "see" well enough. I went back to see my Dr. Audrey when I went home. The hairdressers just couldn't twist my locks properly. I needed my Phineas, dirty little salon towels and all. He is my perfect Phineas. Don't speak of the banks, the post offices, the plumbers, the tailors, the whole lot of them!

The food in the restaurants was just too..bland. And badly cooked. Ugh, they need to get lessons from my 40 Cork Road on how to make a decent vegetable lasagne. As for the cocktails? Yikes, my daughter should run courses for these bar men. The security guards just irritated me. No good reason, I just got irritated by them. Looking all happy and yapping loudly to each other as if they have no care in the world.
I turned into a Rhodesian and muttered through clenched teeth - these people!

I developed a routine - home, office, mall, home, office, mall. My little triangular existence. I only went to church three or four times and stopped. The preacher was too slow. The choir too old. The rituals too white and boring. This was not the Methodist church of vaJevo and Bishop Mukandi. Sundays are for sleeping till mid day. If I wanted to watch a movie, I would catch it on my long haul flights. I made sure I went on interesting routes for this purpose. It took a lot of effort to get me into a local cinema.
I discovered there was a beautiful public park down the road from my flat after three years. I never went that way. Too scary. On foot? Besides, what was there to see? Just more locals and their dogs? The sun could shine all it wanted, I just wasn't going to go out and enjoy it. Or see it. Not here. I would only soak it up on my mum's lawn in Gweru.
The gym is also down the road. I hated the whole concept of gyms anyway, I told myself. All that showing off and seeing to be seen. I was not one of those types. Even two articles in magazine echoed my exact sentiments. The gym was just another social place. And I was not here to be social.

I was only here on a temporary work permit. Everything about my life had to also say, "temporary". Three years ago I was offered the opportunity to buy property. I just took it because..well...it just sounded too easy, a nice thing to do. Not that I wanted to do it, mind. I did not want to look like I actually "lived" here. When immigration officers asked me where I was arriving from - it didn't matter whether I was telling the one in Portuguese speaking Brazil, or the bemused one in India, I would launch into a rather agrressive explanation; I work in South Africa. I don't LIVE LIVE there. You undersand? I live in Zimbabwe. That is my country. That is my home. I am going back there. Anytime now. So I am not "from" South Africa. I am from Zimbabwe. I have nothing to do with South Africa. Once I was told to take a seat and wait on the side at Rome's airport because my story sounded too complicated and fishy. I fumed at these idiotic officers who just didn't get it.
I launched into the same long explanations to complete strangers who tried to make conversation. Being a black Zimbawean with a history of migrant labour in my blood, this sounded like an important concept to explain to people. There is a difference beween home-home, and house. Home-home is kumusha, ekhaya, like in Shurugwi, my village, where my grandparents are buried. That is where I grew up telling people I was "from". Then there is home-house. The one in town. Where you just stay, but you don't actually "live", because nobody is technically from a town.
Sounded like a similar thing in this context. I work-stay in Joburg. But I live-live in Zimbabwe. How difficult was that to understand?

Everything in my flat screamed "temp", transit lounge, waiting room. I could not buy those lovely coffee mugs because, I would only need them for my real coffeee drinking when I went back to my real home. Those chairs would be great - yes, in that year when I go back. Oh the lovely pictures I saw in the gallery, I could just picture them on my proper walls back home. I made lists of what to get when the time came.

Every little chink I got, I skipped into Zim. To see my family and real friends. I didn't want to make any here. My son was shipped back home every school holiday. I would arrive all excited and full of energy. I wanted to see everyone, everything, do all the nice things I wasn't doing in Joburg. I called everyone as soon I touched down, as I waited for my luggage - let's have lunch, let's have breakfast tomorrow, what about a braai? I kept a little temple in my house, ready for my arrival. Nobody could stay there. It was my space which I wanted to find exactly as I had left it. I kept a car ready for my arrival, all year round.
I went on binges, eating everything I didn't allow myself to enjoy away from home. Even the air smelled different and the sun shined brighter because - this was home.


I finally put down the suitcase in January. I have been unpacking it, bit by bit, and I am still in the process. Last Christmas I finally realised that my family and friends get exhausted by my excitement when I visited Zim. They all have full lives that they live when I am not there and they are not going to stop and entertainm me. I realised that I could no longer understand half the conversations that people who live in Zimbabwe have. I can interject here and there. But it is no longer my conversation, and I don't own it the same way they do. Sometimes I can not relate to the jokes, or the "language" they speak. It feels like another country. Which is what it is. Still my country of birth, but not mine in the same sense anymore. I am learning to let it go.

I still love my country. But I also love where I am now. I am learning to love it each day. I have opened myself up to loving South Africa, my not so new home, it's people, and it's sunshine.
I have also come to realise that I can love both countries. This is not a monogamous sexual relationship. I have already imbibed the spirit of my host President! Liking where I am does not make me dislike my home. I feared that liking South Africa would make me unpatriotic. When I came back to Joburg after Christmas, I was so happy to be back I worried about this new feeling. I texted a few friends and got back some wisecracks. These friends saved me from this painful space that I had entered.

Once I started unpacking this suitcase that I have carried around in my head, I have been amazed at the beauty all around me, and the amazing people around me. There's the very friendly Sunday newspaper vendor at the traffick light outside my window. The security guards in my office building and apartment complex. The beggars who fight for prime time spots at the same traffick light in Shona and Zulu who have become my buddies. I take long walks in the park near my apartment and happily declare, "oh I feel so refreshed", just like a proper yuppie. This is me the villager come to town, enjoying walking as if I never walked 5 kilometres to and from Nhema School St Francis Mission in Nhema!
They have amazingly fresh food at the Woolies down the road as well. I walk there and chat to the staff. I buy the washed salad, the ready to eat meals, and the ice cream is to die from. The little pleasures of life suddenly feel more pleasureable because I want to enjoy them.

My friend Nancy has been my saving grace. She zoomed into town a year ago and my life has not been the same since. Well for a start she has a car. So off we zip to drink coffeee, see that person, and that one. We sit in the sun on Sundays and read the papers. We follow it like giant lizards...from brunch through to sundowners, then its back HOME to sleep.
I even enjoy local football on tv, ok, one day at a time, I haven't reached the going to a stadium part. I still haven't figured out which team has more Zimbabweans so I can support it! I even follow one soapie. I love the radio stations, the opennesss, the democracy (and its not a cliche). I even called into a talk show recently and gave an opinion. It felt good. I so enjoy the politics. I can watch, listen, laugh, get all heated up as if I have a stake in this country.

I love my country of Citizenship. It will always be home-home. It will always be my first love. My family is there. My BEST friends are there. I invested all my youth in that country, and I am emotionally invested in it. My ashes will be scattered there when I die, (family take note). I still carry my green mamba with great pride (apparently that is what my national passport is called in ex-Zimbabwean white circles). I haven't quite gotten round to applying for permaent residence because it feels too, permanent. I still listen to the news about my country. I feel deep pain every time I hear something terrible that has happened. But I have had to learn that I can not be in this permanent holding pad anymore. I have a life to live. I have children to imbue with a sense of optimism and joy for life. I can't keep doing this to them anymore. They need to make their own choices about where they want to live, and what they will call home. I was holding them in the same holding pad.

For anyone struggling with being away from home, I highly recommend reading Children of the Revolution by Denaw Mengestu. It will change your life.

I don't know when or if I will be going back to live-live in Zimbabwe.
For now, I have almost finished unpacking the suitcase. I will enjoy this space and all its wierdness. Cocktails anyone?