Searching for Home

You don’t know what home feels like until it no longer exists. When the comforts of the love that was embedded in your soul, and poured out of your physicality daily is no longer apart of your routine, you know that place you found familiar has lost its kinship to your spiritual and fleshly being. Stripped of your culture, your heritage that enveloped you-called you – summoned you into greatness was taken in a heist so greatly accomplished that the thieves still reap the benefits of this bounty to this day. The intelligence mishandled, falsely assigned, funds misappropriated and familial connections left behind. The horizon full of yellows, and the plentiful land mixed with hues of all shades of browns, burnt orange sun reflections and the reds, greens, and blacks- so beautiful that they most certainly are deeply indescribable. Chiseled faces, with cheekbones only the runways of Heaven could behold. Skin tones free from blemishes caused by man-made toxins and diseases. Skin so buttery smooth to the touch that you forget it belongs to a human being. I do not remember my home because I only know the stories that I have been spoon fed. Truths never proven- only hypothesis and probabilities of the homes of my ancestor’s existence.

I will never know the sweet smells of chapati in the crowded clangorous markets,-- unless I purchase a passport to travel back to the future. I will never experience the South African Gwara Gwara with intricate precise movements of my home land…of a land that I have never had the opportunity to visit, without the assistance of a blurred lens of another individual who thinks the pictures they capture will somehow bring solace; yet instead they summon sadness. Why? Because a picture is worth a thousand words, but words could never alleviate, nor eliminate the heartbreak, distress, and anguish experienced by unknown countless victims who lost an entire heritage-a birthright. Our gaze forced through the lens of those who painted the picture so bleak that before I was privy to my history, I perceived to be barbaric and desolate. Only to realize in my adulthood that my childhood horrors were planted like seeds that grew into fear and hesitation to be nurtured by the mothers who are mostly are affectionately known as “Mama.” Because they are all seen as mothers, no matter which children they biologically birth. The familial lines are blurred because blood does not a connection make. It is the warm and delicate pillowy- vaporous reverence for each member of the tribes that collectively care for one another minding the elders and young kinders of the continent’s lands.

Home is where you find shelter from the rain, comfort from a society of judgment, harm and danger. It is a place that allows you to be freely and wholly you, without the doubt and interrogations of others. Home holds your secrets and you can trust that when you turn off the lights at night you are in a safe place. It is where you hang up your photos of loved ones and places traveled throughout the hemisphere. My people know of no such place, because the only one that we do know of was taken-now only to be figments of our imaginations. A place that we write about, fantasize about and imagine having to leave the earth in order to exist there. We are merely grasping at fragments of the arms that would have held us tight, welcoming us home in the evenings as the Serengeti sun fell beneath the smooth sands of adoration and genuine kindness.

So… you tell me, because my confusion often churns and marinates into lividness-which too sometimes feels like home because it’s there when I need it and comforts me when I must respond with it to those who have no idea what it feels to be homeless.