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 ;)
Excellent article Rachel!
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