Freetown Chronicles I: I'm Coming Home

Why do we come back home? After the first mandatory difficult year one will endure once they return home, i am making a trip down memory lane in attempts to consolidate some interesting conversations i've had over the year.  One that always finds itself into many conversations when your accent has a semblance of difference is:  why do we return, from where do we return, and for how long is the return back home?  For some, its a choice. A conscious decision to want to, desire to, need to come home and give back, rejuvenate, be re-inspired, build a foundation, start a business, or one short lovely holiday is enough to choose to make home a home permanenatly. For others, its not a choice its due to family issues, deportation, exhaustion, lack of opportunities out 'there', depression and other types of pressures. The lucky few who make trips in and out of the country, existing in between two worlds and happen to find the balance satisfying, say its a blessing.  For others, home will have to be home for a very long time.

 I was speaking to someone last night at a random party i was invited to you. He shared his reasons for coming back, his reasons were one's i had heard before. "  Back there" was a dead end, bad decisions that lead to living a unfullfilled life became the fuel to light the big move back. He seemed happy to be in freetown, but deep down i knew it wasn't easy. We are not an easy society to live in, live with or even co-exist in. We, the country and its people are often harsh, judgmental, classicist, and simply mean spirited to one another in as much as we are loving, kind, protective and often open to enjoying life to the fullest...meaning eating and drinking the whole night through.

I have also come to understand that many people who return, whether by choice or not seem to more than often re-invent themselves completely. Domestic helpers abroad become pop star sensations, nurses become television hosts, prostitutes and drug hustlers become "the Pa" & "the mami", gang  members are looked upon as hip and happening (as long as they splurge money) and the most average of peoples become something (with the right story) in Sierra-Leone. It becomes this dialectic space where the unreal caress the real offering a compromised union.  We rarely tell the truth about ourselves in this country. Most people are trying to live a life that others will accept and adorn because people seem to GIVE  a whole lotta shit about other people here, back "there" wherever that is, no one cares- not as much anyway. We lose as much as we find ourselves here, everyone is searching and finding, loosing and reaching, re-creating and un-creating with the hope of been validated in this land we love....

so why did i move back? I know deep in my heart that i needed to come back to Sierra-Leone to find my way back into the world. Some times it takes getting really lost in a foreign world to bring you back to living, really living.

....so i ask you....why do you choose to find your way back home? if its not by choice, whats the universe trying to teach you?

   fambul dem this is how we do.