Home

6 months silence, sorry about that! I'm sitting out on the concrete step that bridges the hospital carpark and my little brick house, the burning sun setting is hidden by a tree. But that cool thing is happening where although you can't see the sun, you can see all the effects of it.

I can hardly believe I've lived in Malawi for almost a year! All the cliches are about to come out. I've got itunes on shuffle and Buble (Home) just came on. Of course.
It's almost too hard to begin to think about it retrospectively. It just feels like life right now. It feels like I'm backing away slowly. Won't realise it's gone until I'm gone.

I wanted to go home a thousand times, but I remember at the 6 month mark, realising that if I’d gone home all the times that I’d wanted to go home I wouldn’t be experiencing these moments. I guess that’s what it’s been. A true lesson in being here now. Which admittedly I’ve been pretty terrible at sometimes. But you learn, you learn.

It's incredible how flexible we are. How transient our idea of "normal" is. Every time I felt outrageously out of my depth I reminded myself that this country was millions of people's home. Millions of people's idea of normal. Funny, because now the giant ants and cockroaches seem normal to me. Being this hot all the time feels normal (take that sentence how you will suckazzz :P). These people and this language and the way the mini buses honk all the time, the way the mosquitoes come out at night, the way little children run the streets in little gangs, chase me when I'm running, the way vegetables are stacked for sale in little pyramids on the ground, the way you have to get your receipt stamped on your way out of the grocery store, and soldiers with guns sit on crates outside. All feels like a little bit of home to me.

I knew I'd made it when a few weeks ago we had some visitors stay in my house who weren't so complimentary about the decor or the state of the fridge, and I found myself getting defensive about this little place that's come to be home. They didn't know how lucky they were that the hot water worked the entire time they were here, that they got the most comfortable bed in the house, that they didn't have to dodge thunderstorms during the rainy season.

Home is wherever you can find it, however you can make it. I'm glad I got to figure that one out.