#35: when home becomes nostalgic.

will i ever see my country for what it is if i continue to dwell in the past?

Ceslovas Cesnakevicius.

 Weeks ago, I posted how happy I was to be back in Gambia on my Instagram stories. I was waxing poetic about how healing it was to be surrounded by so much love and history. A new friend, yet to be introduced to my lore, replied to the story and asked some questions. We had a nice, illuminating chat. That conversation birthed a realization: My reverence for The Gambia comes from a place of unsteady nostalgia. I haven’t stopped thinking about our conversation since then.  

 The Gambia is a wistful place to me. I think about it often, with fondness, especially when I am far away from it. I am always dreaming of home. I was ten when I left Gambia for boarding school. It’s been almost ten years since then, and I have never been in Gambia for more than five months at a stretch. People gasp when I tell them that, and I gasp too, because even I am surprised. I, who have lived this weird, complicated, and interesting life, am surprised by how long I  have stayed away from home. Coming home is always an explosive emotional event for me. I am taken aback by familial love. I have to get used to being parented again. I am reminded of my childhood. And, most maddeningly, I am strangely burdened by ‘what could have been’. My relationship with ‘home’ is a complicated tangle. I love home, but sometimes I am unsure if home loves me back. I don’t think home even knows who I am.  I struggle with remembering home sometimes too; the consonants of Wolof don’t slide down my tongue the way they should. I am at home, but I feel like a visitor. I wish it weren’t like that. Whether I am home or away from home, I am plagued by an existential desire to return to something, a nostalgia so strong it renders me speechless. 

Nostalgia is a weird concept. It can be deceptive, this longing for the past. I think it is also useless because there is no going back. The past cannot be recreated. Dwelling on it does no good. It is important to live in the present. We know all this yet we long for not only what has been, but also what could be. I always wonder about the type of adult I would’ve been if I had grown up at home. Would I be happier? Would I carry around the same wounds as I do now? I will never know.

 Once in a while,  you witness an implosion; something that breaks the fragile glass that cocoons your reality. My visit home is that implosion.  I realized that Gambia is not at all what I had dreamed it to be. It never was. The Gambia I wistfully dream about when I am away from it is a fictional place built in the mind of a lonely child. This country is a real place, with real people and real problems. I had never thought of it like that. This is a country healing from the wounds it suffered for almost two decades at the hands of a slightly mad dictator. This is a country struggling to move forward in every aspect, a country plagued with stagnancy. This is also a country cozy with joy. It is all these things at once, and I have to see that to love it fully. My relationship with home has to change. I have to start seeing it for the multidimensional entity it is. 

—