HOMECOMING
I began this piece of writing almost a year ago. I visited Melbourne after living in Arusha, Tanzania for one year. I never really finished it. This title has been looming on my desktop for almost a year and when I first created the file I didn’t anticipate how strongly the theme of Home would influence my sense of self over the next 12 months. April 2020, my sense of Home is still elusive.
Let me show you the starry-eyed view of May 2019, at this point in time I had, somewhat flippantly, applied for a Job in Dar Es Salaam but was yet to hear back.
What a wonderful thing to be able to call two places home.
What a strange feeling leaving home to go back home, and the reverse.One year away from Melbourne and it appears as a caricature of itself.
The streets seem wider, buildings shinier and taller, the people more diverse.
The public transport more blue and yellow than I remember.
I was never one to get homesick, but I understand a little more how one can be connected to a physical place.
And not just my childhood home specifically, but the shitty graffiti along the Frankston line, the Asian cuisine, the southerly keeping my jacket on in May or that multiple people mentioned that there’s a new barista soy milk and it’s better than Bonsoy.I didn’t realise how much I missed it. Melbourne isn’t really that different to any other city, but it is MY city. It’s home. And I feel it, intangible but very real. A connection.
Over the next 12 months, I move city three times, return to Melbourne three times and am never able to plan three months ahead. I’ve written the next portion as a chronological account mainly as a processing tool for myself. I haven’t really had time or space to reflect over the last year so this piece of writing is my way of doing that. Publically. It’s not that interesting so feel free to skim.
June 2019 | Received word that my application for WiLDAf (the job in Dar Es Salaam) had, to my surprise, progressed. Through the entire process, on each progression email a caveat: please do not make any life changes … yet.
July 2019 | If I got the job, I would have to go back to Melbourne for a “pre-departure training”. But as of early July, I hadn’t got the job yet. It was becoming more and more likely that I was the chosen candidate but always on the emails please do not make any life changes … yet. I was so excited about this job opportunity I hadn’t stopped to think about Arusha. My friends, my work (which I still loved), my home (?).
Mid-July | A very intense Friday. I was hungover, had gotten my phone stolen on the way to work that morning and just before morning tea, a phone call from AVP telling me to pack my bags and come to Melbourne because I got the job (visa, health screening and pre-departure training all pending). I’d eaten leftover coleslaw for breakfast and had already had two coffees. So the natural bodily response to all this was a nervous vomit and a cry in Red Garden with the girls. I handed my resignation in the following Monday and two weeks later, a day before my 28th birthday, I was back in Melbourne for an unspecified amount of time.
Sidebar about how my body physically reacts to emotion: Regardless of the emotion, whether it’s anger, sadness, anxiety, happiness, at 80% capacity of that emotion I cry. If I get to 100%, I vomit. On this particular day, I was feeling a lot of all of the emotions.
August — Oct 2019| Only 3 months after writing the little love note to Melbourne, it was now my Limbo. I stayed at Home (?), in my childhood bedroom, with the desk that I studied year 12 on looming beside my single bed. Coming back to your childhood home but not being able to set up properly, feeling like a guest and transient presence in that space was not a comfortable experience. I am so lucky to have that bedroom, that my parents are in a stable and comfortable position, that they were able to help me for an indefinite period of time, while I waited to move back to Tanzania. While I waited to leave them again. I was not my best and most self-aware self over those three months. Not feeling certain about whether I would get my visa, not feeling certain about how long I was going to be in Melbourne. Not being able to plan more than a couple of weeks ahead was once again, not a comfortable experience. I wasn’t happy, I’m impatient by nature and I’d already had my fill of waiting and uncertainty… Oh past Laura if you only knew…
October 2019 | Got the green light and a date to move back to Tanzania. I did have to remind myself that I wasn’t moving back, not exactly. I was moving to a different city, climate, a new Home. My visa still wasn’t fully processed but no one seemed to be stressed about that so I re-entered Tanzania on a short term visa, stamped right next to my cancelled work permit tied to The School of St Jude.
I was so excited. In the 12 months prior, I had decided I wanted to work in social impact, decided I needed to go back to uni, received a grad certificate in Evaluation and now about to begin a 12-month contract in the field. In 12 months time, I was going to have a year of experience, a Masters and another language. It all felt like I was 12 months away from successfully achieving a speedy and smooth career pivot. This whole piece of writing has the huge Corona shaped elephant-in-the-room sized BUT coming. Indulge me for just a few more paragraphs.
January 2020 | I brought in the new year with a trip to Ethiopia and Kenya with the most fantastic travel buddy (shout out to P, the most passionate and insightful human I know) and finally got to say goodbye to Arusha properly. I spent a week in that white house and said goodbye to the girls I lived with as they said goodbye to the city and country we lived in together. Although I’d left four months prior, there was a finality and “properness” to the goodbye this time around, a sense of an end of an era. Throughout my time in Arusha, I had joked we were all living in a sitcom. A new season starting when a new batch of vollies came in. We all like to feel like we are the main character of the story, that a place is forever changed because of our time there. Having the post-goodbye goodbye, four months after I left, allowed me to witness how nothing had changed for Arusha, but Arusha had changed for me. This isn’t to say that you don’t have an impact, on a micro-interpersonal level I have to believe we all do. But macro-level, this is just another reminder that my ego is wrong about most things. It wasn’t ever that Arusha was my home, It was those girls. The connections I made. They were my home. Without them there, Arusha was just another place where I confidently navigated the public transport system.
February 2020 | After a month or so of inductions, language training and the Christmas break, I had a furnished apartment, a rice cooker and a workplace with fantastic humans that I was so excited to work with. I had concluded that my childhood home didn’t feel like home, and now Arusha didn’t either. I’d gone from feeling like both were home to neither. But I had this new place, a fresh start. We know how much I love a fresh start. Maybe this is part of my problem with Home, although I hate leaving, I think I love arriving more. I loved my apartment, I loved Dar. Coastal air, sunny days and fantastic seafood. I began cooking and drawing and developing my new routine. My new Home. There was one small niggle though. I didn’t have a long term visa. I was unable to plan any more than three months ahead still. I had been dealing with uncertainty for almost 9 months by now and was getting better at processing it, most of the time.
A personal practice in letting go of control. Uncomfortable, but I was convincing myself it was necessary to acknowledge and lean into this feeling. I, like most, struggle with control. I want to control things that I can not, and lose control when I say yes to too many things. I tried to make this time in Dar about letting go of control. About accepting the unknown and taking it as a way to commit to fewer things. My mantra for this year was “slow burn”. Be patient and allow the unknown to happen. I didn’t know it at the time, but this effort was not in vain. I could never have imagined how much more uncertain shit would get over the coming months.
At the end of February, I flew back to Melbourne for a short (12 days) trip to go to two weddings. I apologise for my carbon emissions, but I wasn’t going to miss these two weddings for anything. Especially because they (the two couples) had coordinated to make them close together so those of us travelling from far away could come to both. I had denounced Melbourne as my home in October last year, pretty much convinced that I wasn’t ready to move back any time soon, but over these two weeks, with the help of wedding good vibes and pressureless family time, I remembered again why I love Melbourne. Why do I only love Melbourne when I’m leaving it?
March 2020 | At the beginning of March I was on my way back to Dar after saying goodbye again, feeling much more positive about Melbourne, and being really REALLY sad about leaving this time. At this point, I was reentering on a 3-month business visa and had accepted that this contract might be shorter than planned. So I started March thinking I was maybe returning to Melbourne in July. I landed back in Tanzania on the 11th of March.
12th of March 2020 | WHO announces Corona Virus a pandemic.
Within a week of arriving back to Dar, on my two year anniversary of calling Tanzania home, I got an email telling me that Corona Virus is a BIG deal and the Australian Volunteers Program that I was on is sending everyone back home (?) to Australia.
The initial timeframe was two weeks. 48 hours after the first email, that time frame had reduced multiple times and the directive was now ASAP and so I (along with over 400 Aus Volunteers around the world) had to pack up my shit and haul ass back to Aus within a week.
As far as logistics challenges go, I was nothing but impressed by the AVP staff who helped get me back to Melbourne with flights being cancelled and borders closing and no time to breathe. The week of the 12th of March was a very long week. I am so grateful to the volunteers that I went through that with, both in Tanzania and in various other countries. Knowing we were all in the same boat gave me enough calm to continue putting my shit into suitcases.
Saying goodbye to Dar in such a short time was overwhelming. Prior to that email, I’d felt like I’d hit my stride. We were making progress at work and I’d seen more of Tanzania in a week of fieldwork than I had in the two years prior. I was learning so much from my colleagues at WildAF and I had such a fun time in our little container office with the team. My last Friday at work was such a full experience. It was a true Tanzanian goodbye. There were balloons, dancing, a beautiful cake and tears. WiLDAf is a phenomenal organisation and I can’t express how lucky I felt to be a part of that family.
I arrived back in Melbourne over a month ago now. I chose not to move back in with my parents. Last year made me realise that we are better as a family when I don’t live with them. Also, they are old (sorry Mum and Dad) and I didn’t want to risk getting them sick after the journey home through Dubai. I’ve moved in with Conor, a friend from uni, in Carlton who by chance and perfect timing had a spare room exactly when I needed it. It’s on the 27th floor and my bedroom has a door to a balcony view of the CBD. I can see all the way down Swanston St to the Shrine and if a squint on a clear day, I can discern a tiny square of Port Phillip Bay between buildings (three of which I worked on while I was an engineer). For the two weeks after I flew home the only outside air I got was on the balcony. Such a bizarre feeling, feeling like Melbourne was staring back at me. Not feeling sure about how I - or Melbourne - felt about me returning so suddenly. And not really getting to BE in Melbourne because Melbourne is in hibernation.
Now I’m up to the bit where we are all experiencing varying degrees of the impacts of the Corona Virus. I’m finding it difficult to reflect and write about Corona because there is so much content already out there and I don’t want to contribute to the noise. But since we are all somewhat shouting into the void, I tried to write how I’m feeling…
- I feel grateful to be Australian, that I have a support network and a safety net.
- I’m nervous about being unemployed and nervous for my family that work in health care both here in Australia and in the Philippines.
- I feel icky when I think about America and the suffering and protests that are happening simultaneously and the argument of personal liberty over community safety that I do not understand.
- I’m pleasantly surprised at my level of calm in the midst of this uncertainty. I constantly remind myself that I shouldn’t be anxious about things that I cannot change and I now seem to be listening.
- I’m sad about leaving Tanzania and WiLDAf so suddenly.
- I’m happy to be in Melbourne, in this apartment, still studying.
To feel centred, I’m trying to create as much as I consume with respect to content. Whether it’s drawing, painting, cooking or writing this. I think that might be why everyone is making sourdough. A certain amount of balance and control comes out of creating.
I am now done with leaving. For a little while, I think. I miss security, both financial and spatial. Spatial Security, maybe that is what I feel about Melbourne. And in these uncertain ~unprecedented~ times maybe that’s what we all need.
Spatial Security.
A new routine, but the same mini hand coffee grinder, every morning. Day by day. Maybe all this uncertainty, moving about and ruminating has taught me to feel at home in my own head.
