Repatriation

This post is my very first attempt at blogging, which is interesting because I don't know if I've ever considered myself the blogging type. Anyway, I have spent a vast amount of time away from my normal social luxuries, and thought that this was a good way to balance my compulsive musing with my love of community.


Responses will always be appreciated.

So to get into the title of this post, I want to give a little preface. This title is mostly inspired by my best friend's sister who is returning to the States after spending - what? - two+ years in Uganda. The issue is not so much where she was, but the fact that she was "elsewhere." To personalise the story, I have recently moved back to my childhood home in Glencoe, Trinidad and Tobago. I have spent the last seven years in residence at different interesting nooks around the world. My first stop was the very small, homogeneous Isle of Wight, UK; next was the very large, cosmopolitan London, UK followed by Abilene, Texas. I was in Abilene the shortest time of these three, but it definitely did the most "damage". Perhaps a different post will tell the story of why I moved from England to the States, but this post is about coming home.

My travels have left their marks on me. For example, I now sound like I grew up on a plank of wood that floated from Trinidad to England to Texas. I deluded myself for the first few years of travel that I sounded different because my language had changed - I used colloquialisms from my current destination and that is what made me seem "foreign". It is only now that I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I do have an accent that sounds a little British, a little American and kind of Trinidadian. Grrrh. This is probably the most obvious feature of my time away that someone might be able to notice. The things that no one can really tell are the most interesting though.

My perspective on life will never be the same again. I am broken by the idea that my life could ever exist solely in one country again. At 26, I have spent significant amounts of time in 5 countries and with every long term reside I have accumulated loves and habits and homes. The interesting (if you want to call it that) thing is that when I returned "home" to Trinidad, I noticed every negative aspect of my "life" here, and in reality it was more of the shell of a life than a whole life. In my Texas life I had a stable friend base, I had my nice, neat apartment, my own cooking and workout routine and church with my Bestie, including young professionals' Sunday school.  When I returned to the home I left, what I remembered was not what I encountered. Even when you understand that life goes on without you, that your friends marry or get high responsibility jobs or move away, you still are not prepared. It is amazingly difficult to prepare for the feelings of guilt that creep across your mind - why isn't it just straightforward and easy to live in the home I grew up in?

The one thing that I think you can't get enough preparation for is the idea that you are no longer like everyone else you knew in your home country. You're not even like your sister or your brother. You are now a Trinidadian, an American, a Whereverian who lived in place or places X and now you are one of those multinationals. Your life will never be contained in the location of your origin, because I guarantee that you would have found some new origins in the places you stayed. When you go to Walmart, you will look at the as seen on TV section near the checkout and think of how absolutely vain that is when you saw a half naked little boy happy to touch your hair because it was so silky. You will look around while out with friends at Chilis and think "What are we all doing to matter, to help?"

It is okay.

As a praying lady, I believe that God is with us. What that means for the people driven to live in other countries (and I do think this lifestyle takes a particular breed) is that God is not surprised or ignorant of the urgings of our hearts. Emmanuel (God is with us). As a person going through the stages of resettlement, I want to say that you are not alone in your feelings. It is a great experience to live in another country. When you have the absolute treat of finding a home in that "other", it means that your origins will have a slightly different fit. I want to tell you to trust God to keep on guiding you to the place where your heart urgings meet His will.

Love,
J