Tomorrow I head back to Lesotho to start a 2 year term with at Growing Nations (GNT) with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)*. I have slept in many different beds and been through many transitions since I left Lesotho just over 4 months ago. Mostly I have in Canada visiting friends and family, but most recently I returned to the US and then South Africa (SA) to do an MCC orientation.
During my last time in Lesotho my I have often used the word ‘home’, but it was not always to refer to the same place. When I talked with new people about where I was from, what I ded at home, ect. I would use the word home to refer to my home community in Canada or the broader Canadian culture. As I spent more time in Lesotho I started to refer to the place that I lived with my ‘host’ family as ‘home’, especially when I was visiting in SA and talking about life in Lesotho. Over time my ‘host’ family ceased to be my host family and just became my family. And the people I lived with simply became my mother and sisters and brothers.
When I flew to SA 2 weeks ago I watched Madagascar 3. I watched it because it had been quoted a lot by one of my fellow SALTers but there was one scene that stood out to me about ‘home’. #Spoiler alert# There are 4 zoo animals that got out of the zoo that have been having adventures throughout the world. They have been trying to get ‘home’ for a long time. When they finally make it back to the zoo they stand outside the gates and reflect on how much smaller everything looks and how tall the fences are that separate them from each other. They then decide to go back and join the new friends they have made rather than go back to what they thought was their home. It made me think about how my perceptions of where home is has changed. I still consider Canada home, I still love seeing my family and friends there, but I can no longer ‘see’ it exactly the same. I am realizing that it is not the only place that I consider ‘home’ any more.
When I arrived in SA I stayed at the MCC headquarters. It is a place I had often stayed before and I felt ‘at home’ there. As I started to meet old friends again it started to feel more like ‘home’. For a long time I have been looking forward to seeing my Basotho family again. As I have been thinking about going back to Lesotho, in a way, it feels like I am preparing to go ‘home’. I will still miss my Canadian family and I will still miss my Canadian ‘home’. But the Mumford and Sons song lyrics ‘where you invest your love, you invest your life’ have been echoing in my head. And I would say that I have invested my love in Lesotho and now part of my life, part of where I consider home, is also Lesotho.
*See profile for explanation
