Zimbabwe, and Me

I've read two excellent pieces of writing within the last week about Zimbabwe, place and white people and I've consequently been thrown back in time to memories of my own thinking of these topics almost three years ago as I worked through my honours thesis on the topic of white unbelonging.

I've just finished "Shame: confessions of an aid worker in Africa" by Jillian Reilly (2012). A fascinating read. She retells her experiences living in South Africa and Zimbabwe in the 1990s and coming to terms with the truths and horrors of trying to "do good" in places she didn't understand and wasn't ever completely let into or part of.

Over the weekend I read another very well written piece, "Being Accepted at Home", yet to be published, by my sister. I'll post the link to the article once it wins the competition it was written for. The essay was supposed to be about assumptions changed and challenged, or something like that. She wrote about her own story realising her whiteness and the historical and present implications of it as a Zimbabwean living both in and outside Zimbabwe.

I would do both these pieces injustice if I tried to summarise them here. The point is they made me think, as good writing should. Being back in the US for a brief spell has made me remember all the things I actually like about this place (another post about that) but has also very quickly reminded me about what I struggled so much to live with living here. I am so comfortable, almost content, almost flourishing at times, in my life at home right now. Everyone I meet asks when I will be leaving Zimbabwe. What are my plans for the future. I don't have any right now. Vague ideas but no plans and, though I'm not sure how it will happen or what it will look like, I'm beginning to realise that I don't want to leave Zim. I'm beginning to find a place there and the nervous, apologetic feelings of feeling out of place and like I'm intruding in my own country are slowly being replaced by a confident, sure, sometimes angry belief -- that's not quite the right word but it will have to do for now -- that I do have a right to belong, maybe to flourish, there. That no one can tell me that I don't.