Where the Grass is Greener

 

 

 

Miranda Hart said it in Call The Midwife, ‘I have acres and acres of time’.

Like me.

I know I should be grateful for all the open-ended hours, should use them wisely. But I’m overwhelmed by them; they loom and taunt, ‘What are you going to do with us all then, hey, hey, c’mon, make a plan?!’.

And I’m tired of change and loneliness. I want to have a home. In a city. Where I can drink capuccino with my best friend and go to her yoga classes and eat lunch from a menu and giggle.

I want to stamp my feet and shout, ‘enough, enough, I’ve had enough‘.

Instead I walk solitarily across a vast empty space (where the  grass really is greener than in my old dusty Outpost home. So why does it feel more intimidating?).

And have ethereal conversations to fill big silent gaps.

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And I skulk on Facebook and see barefaced friends. And scour cyberspace for conversation and inspiration.  And I thought this was clever.

http://thepoetrypressed.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/no-make-up-selfies/

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Why This is Home

My daughter, writing her dissertation, ‘Never Complete. Never whole. White Skin and an African Soul’, asks me for a quote, ‘Why do you think you’re African’.

I tell her, I feel African because everything about this place is familiar from the light, to the seasons, to the rains, the colours, the insects, the birdcalls, the dust. And especially the people and the language around me and that colourful chaos that permeates and gets right under my skin.

I don’t feel at home in the same way anywhere else. I don’t feel a part of the easy fabric of a place like I do here.
I don’t know if that makes me African.

But I know it makes Africa home.

To belong to a place it needs to feel as if it fits. This does.

And so does this.