February 27, 2014
"I am finally in a place where people look like me, they talk like me. Their skin is the same colour, their voices round over their vowels, just like mine does. It sounds strange. Is this really what I sound like, look like? Are these really my people? They don't feel like it. My people have dark skin and big smiles. They speak another language - a beautiful language which my head is constantly full of. Every time I open my mouth I have to remember that it's English words that need to come out. In Africa I forget that I am white. Here, I am reminded of it constantly - my reflection in stranger's faces, my voice echoed in theirs. I feel like an imposter in my own country, in my own skin.
I know I am from this country. New Zealand. I know that I grew up here. That I love it. But it feels so strange. So unlike home.
Home is far away, in a hot country in East Africa. Home is where a dozen tiny arms reach out to me for hugs, who love me simply because I love them. Home is a group of children singing in the twilight, a bunch of boisterous nannies laughing. All the time I was in Tanzania I kept thinking about home - how far away it was. Turns out it was right there all along."
Fast forward 18 months and I am back in Tanzania, back in my other home. I arrived here two weeks ago today. Tanzania is a long way from New Zealand whichever way you look at it - it's long through the Middle East, long through Asia and long through Europe. It's just really far away.
It wasn't just the distance that was long though - the journey here this time was not an easy one. There were many setbacks and delays, even right up until I tried to check in at the airport. I cried there and said, as I had a dozen times in the previous week, that I had changed my mind and didn't want to go anymore. All the problems had left me thinking that maybe I wasn't meant to come. My mother said the opposite, "Perhaps you're meant to be there and something is trying to stop you."
Either way, I'm back. I know I will always be torn between New Zealand and Tanzania. When I was there, all the time a part of me wished I was here. Now I'm in Tanzania, a bit of my heart longs for NZ. I can't see there ever being a solution for that. I have a home in both places. And I don't know how long I will be here, whether it will be one year or ten. All I can do is trust that I am here for a reason, that God has a plan and that I will be useful to His work in this place.
And to put it briefly - despite everything, I'm glad to be back. I'm happy to be home once again.
xoxo,
-Hannah
