A pilgrim heart, and my continual search for “home”


For those who have not read my previous blog posts, I work with over 30 peace clubs in Zambia, and that has required me to do a lot of travelling to monitor and meet with teachers in Lusaka where I am based, but also to the surrounding villages in Southern Province. I feel like my job description should have included something along the lines of“SALTer will be expected to be adapt to nomadic way of living, becoming “pilgrim-like” and comfortable with living out of a backpack”… Though I live with a host family, I seem to be continually on the move. The past few months have usually been divided up between a few weeks at my home in Lusaka, dispersed with trips to Southern Province to monitor Peace Clubs or help facilitate teacher trainings in rural schools. Oh, and a pretty sweet vacation to Zanzibar mixed in there too.


But as a result of that, this year I have lived through a constant internal battle to find a home where I can truly belong. In Zambia what I consider to be my home is Lusaka, a developing city of over 30 million people. I work in the city center- the hub of congestion, with an inescapable amount of poverty, noise and harassment. It is far from picture perfect, but after living there for almost 9 months, it is the one place aside from my home in Canada that I know like the back of my hand. It is my home in the sense that I have grown comfortable with the culture. I can take the mini bus to most places in town by my self with ease, I know how to handle drunkards who shout offensive things at me, I catch myself thinking response in the local language first before I use English, and I know where I can get the best and cheapest shwarma in town.  But do I find peace and rest in that home? Sometimes, yes. But the peace comes in shorter glimpses... waves of fleeting moments that help me through and remind me of the reason I am here when I lack the sense of belonging even in my comfortability. I have found profound moments of joy here even admits a harsh environment, and that is not to be denied.

Contrastingly, when I come to Southern Province for work, my soul immediately finds rest. My mood shift is so predictable that you could almost chart it on a map. I have space to breath, the people I meet are warm and welcoming and I do not deal with the stresses of harsh city life. But, I am also very aware that it is also not my home. When I take these trips I come in as a visitor, living at the mercy of other people’s kindness and hospitality. I trust that though I never fully know what I can expect, there will always be someone to show me the way. I am in a constant state of learning, trying my best to adapt to a whole new culture that is completely different from Lusaka though they are only 5 hours away. This is not a bad thing, but the short snippets can feel like teasers- they show me the best parts of each place without giving me enough time to dig my roots into the nitty gritty aspects that might drive me up the wall like Lusaka. On one of my trips, I was staying with a teacher who called me while I was out for a walk to come back to her place for lunch. When I answered the phone she said, “Rachel, you can come home now!” And I smiled at the simplicity of that statement, and the thought of Sikalongo being my home after only being there for one day. Since my time in Zambia, home has become an ever expanding definition that has stretched into so many different contexts and situations…I hardly know what to make of the word anymore.



And that is when I realized that I might be longing for something that I cannot find on this earth. The existential ache for home is something that we as humans have to live with, and my year seems to be a continual search for a sense of “home” that does not exist here in its fullest form. Its not so depressing as it sounds though. I believe that coming to terms with the truth that life can never stay as it is, is a natural part of the human journey, and brings us closer to God and our eternal home. It puts less pressure on each place I travel to as becoming the end all and be all destination of perfect peace, but fosters a sense of discovery to find the little sign posts and teasers along the way.

An author I love named Joyce Rupp says, “Because we are pilgrims whose homeland is not here, we search, travel, discover, live with mystery, doubt and wonder. We must give ourselves to the human journey and not try to by-pass it because it is in and through our humanness that we discover the beauty of the inner terrain. It is though this that we are transformed into who we are meant to be.”

As I am only two short months away from coming back to my home in Canada, this theme has pervaded my thoughts entirely. An ache for a home, belonging, roots, family, understanding and stability has grown deep within me. I am admittedly growing weary of nomadic life, though I know and have seen the value of the journey time and time again. Though it may not be my “eternal home”, it is a home that my little nomad self has grown a deeper appreciation for, and I cannot wait for the day when I can sit down with my mom, my boyfriend, and my friends again and sink into a the home that gives me a great joy, as temporary as it may be ;)



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