By Daimone Siulapwa
This month make exactly one year since I returned home to resettle after having spent almost 2 decades in the Diaspora, to be exact, 19 years and 4 months.
Today, I buy myself a large whisky and celebrate my survival, Africa is indeed a jungle and in a very good way. You need to be mentally prepared before you put your foot here. but home is home…. At some stage everything loses meaning as compared to the feeling of being home amongst your people and your family that you love….. I have no regret I made up my mind to resettle back home.
Just bought my first farm, I hope to retire there in about 10 years and not in an OLD AGE HOME…I am 41 years this year.
There are three ways to go back home when you live in the Diaspora,Dead in a Coffin, by deportation or by voluntary re-location. We don’t have control over the first two and they are the easiest, the last one we do have control and is the hardest of them all.
Voluntary resettlement can be due to old age, sickness or you have completed your studies, or you have made your fortune or you are just tired of living in another country… you just want to go home..
How long have you been away?” People asked me year in and year out and the next question would be, how can you stand it, don’t you miss home?
Aren’t you ever going back?”
When you have been living out there for a year, or may be four years,it’s easy to answer that question….. I am going back home definitely,
but, five year is a different story, ten years is another story…twenty years … it looks impossible
Many people will say “Yes, I miss my country, but I find it hard to believe it really is possible to go back home and resettle comfortably. When I first left my country in, I told myself I would be back home in five years or less. Get in, get my degree or earn myself some money and bang.. back home.. Now here I am, am glad am back home,but it took me almost two decades and not five years.
Are you ever going back home? The words send a chill down people’s spine.Everyone has their reasons for leaving their home country—better
education, the promise of a better life, political expediency, etc. It doesn’t matter because when we get there (wherever “there” happens to
be), we are all exiles of some sort. For some, it makes no difference since they have no intention of going back to their countries. They
embrace their new lives to the fullest, infused with self-congratulation and gratitude at the rare moments when they spare a thought for the people and country they left behind; thankful to have escaped the horrors that continue to plague the unfortunate in their homelands.
And then there are those like me, who, even as they build a life in their country of exile, even as they dig deeper and more solid foundations in other lands, cast a longing eye to the homes of their hearts.
We are the “keyboard activists” ( the Blog masters, Musana Wa nzili,THE SAINT, Mushota, MMD Bootlicker, Zedian, Umupondo, Wanu Ngwee,INDEPENDENT OBSERVER, Nubian Princess and many more ) who follow every event in our homelands with breathless anticipation, fingerspoised over keyboards to send words of praise, of chiding, of encouragement, of displeasure, to the numerous online news sites.
We are the perennial protestors and demonstrators, who camp out at our embassies to protest our governments’ policies, who refuse to patronize companies whose operations in our countries are detrimental to the welfare of our fellow citizens. We are the activists, who organize our fellow citizens and encourage them to share in our vision of a better future for our country.We are the doctors, the engineers, the computer scientists, the
lawyers, the students, the accountants, who, even as we sit behind a desk at work or in class or in a research laboratory, ponder on how we
can use our knowledge and expertise to benefit our countries, better still, how can we go back home after so long?
Yet, tinged with the hope and the desire to return is the mouth-drying, nausea-inducing Fear. The dread of finding out that we don’t fit in anymore with “our” people and in “our” society (How many friends do we have left? How many people can we relate to?). The fright of realizing that we’ve been gone too long and everything has changed beyond our ability to cope. The terror of acknowledging that we have become too used to the customs and conveniences of our adopted nations, the horror of giving in to the panicky voice inside us that says we can’t make a difference. The more we desire to achieve a level where we can affect the outcome of things in our countries, the deeper we find ourselves enmeshed into the fabric of life in the hands of our exile.
My sisters and brothers, it is possible to go back home and resettle.What we all need to do is plan carefully, as what we want to do when we get back home… do you want to start a business? Do you want to go into politics or charity work?
The exposure you have so far acquired can help your country be a better place for our future generation, we can’t all make million of dollars to take back home but we can all positively contribute to the development of our countries.. Africa needs you.
The name of the game is contacts. Being over there puts us at a major disadvantage because we’re out of the loop. Spending some time working
for someone else before branching out on own covers you somewhat because you can use the time to develop your own contacts. You could
also find a local partner who has the prerequisite knowledge and understanding of the system, though it may be very tough to find honest partners.
Look for like-minded people anywhere, everywhere. There are lots of people around who think the way you do, just looking for the right contacts, the right person, or the right project to come along.
I know, always, accompanying this maze of terrors, is the bigger, less acknowledged fear that in a five to ten years we will be too old to
resettle back home… Have no such fear, it is possible, age or your financial situation should not be an issue.
But you need to ask yourself a few questions and answer them as honestly as you can to yourself, reflect on them and give yourself a minimum of 2 years on the plan to resettle back home….
Some question to reflect on would be..
1. Is it possible to really go back home?
2. What should I do to prepare?
3. How long should I plan?
4. What happens with my citizenship in my adopted country?
5. How does my spouse fit in?
6. What do we do with our children?
7. Should I go into business or should I start my own business, or should I become a politician or join the government?
