Home is supposed to be the place where you’re always welcome, a place where you don’t need a booking or have to give notice of your arrival.
But what happens when you are now afraid to go home? Who do you turn to when you fear the same place you love dearly? I facilitated an unscientific poll on my website recently, asking when people living outside Zimbabwe intend to go back.
The majority said within five years, followed by those who said they would go back when there is a change of government. The number of people who said they would never go back was equal to those who said they would go back in ten years time.
I am assuming that those who said “never” and those who are waiting for a change of government, are what the present government calls “enemies of the state”. Even if they wanted to go back now, they cannot.
There are also a number of people who were traumatised by events in Zimbabwe that they have chosen not to call it home any longer.
It’s a shame and it must be hard to be in such a situation, but we are adults who are free to make our own choices.
My interest is in those who think they will be going back in five years time. I wonder if they made this decision from their heart or was it a well thought out plan involving the head? The heart is forgiving, the heart is tolerant, the heart will go on. But the problem starts when you start to analyse why you are going back. Money is always the number one issue and then comes the little — but still important things — like water shortage and the power blackouts.
Then comes security issues and health matters. Then it occurs to you that your children might not get into good schools because you might not be able to afford it. Then it starts to get scary, but you think of the millions who are living there and the thousands in the cities like Harare who are just managing. If they can, why can’t I? Commonsense then tells you that the key is to go back with as much money as possible, but you’ve heard of a story of so-and-so who went with lots of cash and lost it in a failed business and demanding relatives.
Then you comfort yourself by saying you will start a less risky business. So you give yourself another year or two to save the money for your big homecoming. At the same time your life has to continue in the country you’re living in. Your landlord is not going to give you a period of grace because you need all your money so you can go back home. The year goes by so fast because as well as paying for your living expenses, you still have to support those at home.
Before you know it, it’s a new year and your resolution is to cut down on luxuries and start being serious about saving. It’s the same resolution you made last year. Time is not waiting for you. You become more and more anxious. You become angry. Who is responsible for putting you in this situation? As if you don’t have enough to make you go insane, your friends back home keep bragging about how they have made it and send you pictures of their mansions. Telling you how they have just come back from holiday in Cape Town and that they are going to Dubai in April and might stay in that “all gold” seven-star hotel.
Your head is spinning. You have sleepless nights trying to come up with a plan that will get you out of the mud. Then it hits you that you don’t necessarily have to go back home, but your heart sinks and your head says you have no plan, so stay where you are or else you are going back to poverty. The same poverty you ran away from. Everyone will laugh at you.
There goes another year and then you start to resent Zimbabwe. Everything about it! You stop reading any news from home. Your calls home are now limited. But life has to go on, so you go back to living the routine life in your adopted country, back to abusing Stella Artois and Johnny Walker, back to partying every other night.
You quit the other job, keep one and take it easy. Upgrade your car, throw a party and invite people you don’t know. Then it hits you, the lottery! Why didn’t you think of that before? All these years, surely you could have won something by now. So you vow to play Lotto twice a week and, if and when you win then you will go back to Zimbabwe. What are the chances?