Homegoing

23/11/19

My mother sent a video to the family group chat. In it, a swell of Guineans waved torches to the PAIGC anthem:

Partido ku libertam di tudo mal,

Ku sangui, suor,

Ku larma.

Tears welled up and spilled over as I replayed it, the words my mother was singing along to becoming clearer every time. I was overwhelmed by the spirit of the people and my love for Guiné-Bissau. It sunk in for the first time that this homegoing has been a long time coming.

I write this as a record of the clarity and conviction that I felt after those tears, to remind me what I have been looking forward to on the days that I cling to what I would have 'left behind'. (In truth, no one is leaving anything anywhere. Distance doesn't change that, I have learned that lesson over and over in my life with every new beginning.)

There had been signs here and there pointing me home. Earlier that day I had even sent my partner an album by the group Tabanka Djaz who are, inarguably, a Guinean essential. We agreed that Silencio was a banger but not much else was said for the rest of the day. My leaving has been a sensitive topic, and on this particular day, there must have been an irritant that led me to write this. I don't think that I was ever at peace with the reality of going home until that anthem on the group chat. It is time at last that I get acquainted with the country that I can only love through my parents' memories and the brief trysts I've had with it.

my father at 20

I can't speak of returning without speaking about my father. He was never meant to leave. He reminds us of this often. I think about it often. I would see how different he would have been, if only in glimpses, whenever he would disappear on our holidays, laughing the day away with his best friends under the djemberem. And who could fault him for it? He was finally home, after two years... eight... twenty-one… but it was never forever. It was never to grow old beside his best friends. Never within walking distance from his childhood home for longer than the three weeks that he would scrape for Christmas. It was never forever. But thank God he lives to return to the mother that raised him but who, in ’98, fell to ill to keep us all. Thank God for his homegoing, and what a time it is to go home.

The group chat has been full lately of documentation from the campaign trail. Every shot of my parents on this adventure towards change fills my heart with a fresh wave of hope and patriotism. Anyone who knows me surely knows how much I love my country, but hope has always been reluctant. That is, there is a reason we have been away for as long as we have. Maybe one day, I will write wholly about what this meant to and for my parents. One day I will need to sit with them to understand, appreciate, and document this sacrifice.

But for now, I am renewed with hope for home. The election is coming up on the 24^th of November, and my God, something has got to give.

Partido di manga di rassa
Lus ku guia di povo

Partido di paz

Partido PAIGC.

What a time it is for a homegoing!

It’s been a bittersweet few months over here with job applications and with my final day in the UK looming. I was so desperate to stay here, for my partner, my friendships, my career, my poetry, and every failed attempt felt like I was being ripped away from a home I had built over four years. Eventually I stopped trying to find signs that I was meant to stay, and instead started praying for acceptance for whatever would come next.

When I bought my one-way ticket home, I started praying for my purpose at home to be clear, and though I can’t know that for sure until I am there, I do know that what Guiné-Bissau can give me, and what I can give it in return far exceeds what would have been here in the UK. Now I pray that I may accept what is new and keep what is to be kept.

I didn’t know I was going to write this tonight, but I feel somehow that it has wanted to be written for a while. I considered writing about my job search experience, but I don’t think it would have been as cathartic as this. I know the challenges at home, but I also know that change is possible and God... Something. Has. Got. To. Give.

Don’t get me wrong, it will still be difficult to leave, but this isn’t something I am unfamiliar with. This time is different though, somehow. There is a finality to this one. Of course, I know the course of my life will change, and I don’t even know how long I will be at home, but it’s the first time I can say that I am moving back.

I look forward to getting reacquainted with the country I left so long ago. I look forward to being a citizen of the land instead of the world for a while. I look forward to re-learning my tongue, cleaning it and scrubbing it until it is as if I never spoke a word in any other language. I look forward to learning my country, knowing it like I know the nooks and crannies of the house I was meant to grow up in, to relearn it every day as it grew from my father’s bachelor pad into a family home. I look forward to the sunshine. To the carnival that I have never had a chance to be a part of; to mango season; to the islands; to my beloved capital with its worn and telling walls.

The home I have gotten to know so well, that has changed as I have changed.

I look forward to seeing my parents comfortable, sitting back into their skin like they never left it, growing old in it like they were meant to. I look forward to being a Guinean in Guiné-Bissau again and finally. Where I am allowed to exercise my citizen rights for unity and progress, just as my mother and father.

What a time it is, in this season of change in me and in Guiné, for a homegoing.

Guiné-Bissau, nha kerensa, n na riba.