...Homesick for the first time...

For the first time in my life I am homesick. Don't get me wrong, I have travelled to different places in different amounts of time yet I have never ever missed home like how I miss it now when I have only been away for one week. It doesn't even compare to that time that I was in Beijing for a month...I didn't miss home like this.  I am a weird walking contradiction. When i am home, all I want to do is leave, flex my wings, travel experience different places. Zanzibar is seriously clausterphobic for us locals and it should never be taken more than three months at a time dosage. (well that's my personal policy, ofcourse if its possible a lower dosage of that place is always advisable) So far, any time I have ever been homesick when I am away from home I know that it is cured by landing in that place, see some familiar faces and I am ready to jet off to another place.

Yet this time its different, this time I really really really miss home. Don't get me wrong I love SA, I love going out, the place, the shopping, the braai, so much of this place is appealing to me but I am craving for my home. Maybe its this life growing inside me so restless with being in a foreign land, maybe because this wonderful country cannot cater for my weird cravings that I am counting the days, hours and minutes until I am home. 

If I am honest, what i miss most about home is You. I miss knowing that you are there. I know you are just a phonecall, whatsapp, facebook away but you are not here next to me. You are not here to hold me. You are not here for me to hog the sheets from, you are not here for me to annoy, I miss you more than I have ever missed you before. I realise so much of what I take for granted just because that you are always there at home for me. Imagine this I even miss your snoring. So for the first time in my life, I am homesick for real. I am homesick for you, because when I am in your arms, I am home. So my home is where you are. 

Putting This Up in My HOME!!!

Different

Sometimes I want to scream. Scream that its not fair, scream at everyone to stop expecting so much from me, scream at anyone to accept me, to stop judging me to just let me be. Yes, I am a different kind of breed to the usual Zanzibari Muslim woman, married at that. Yes, I was born here, lived here and grew up in this very island - its just that I went to a different type of school. I went to the International School of Zanzibar, after that the International School of Moshi and then to the University of Dar-es-Salaam. I normally credit these facts to the reason why I turned out the way I did. Obviously if I was never schooled in those places I would have been just like everyone else(thank God I am not).

The result is not always good. I always have to explain why I speak such fluent English, even though I grew up in Tanzania. As shameful as it is, I know the geography of the rest of the world but I don't know the geography of my own country. Half my phone calls are unintelligible to those around me and I sort my friends by continent, and all my best friends are at least in 5 different countries. and then I still live in Zanzibar, where different is rare. Everyone is so sure of how their life is going to be, there are so many set rules that i always find myself breaking, so i tend to stick out like a sore thumb. Owh, I am owkay dress code wise I can fit in - but the moment I open my mouth...all hell breaks lose. I think the great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity. See due to the background I had I can't help but be affected by it, yet my muslim home and society have specific expectations that always contradict my said back ground.

I was taught in school that it okay to question things, but all I see around me is that people take things as they are. I want to dress in jeans and go swimming in swim suit, but my society categorises that as an abhorred action. I want to have to be someone, most people don't understand that notion. I know people here but its hard to make friends, everyone knows everyone else, they have been together for the past 10 years...they are even scared to open their doors to me. I am always torn between my desire to be myself and my secret need to fit in sometimes, to be normal for lack of better word. This constant battle, some of my friends tell me I have a split personality. Its hard to say the opposite of what I feel, grovel before what I dislike and rejoice at what brings me nothing but misfortune - and funny enough I catch myself doing that time and again.

But on a fine day like this, I want to say to all of them that judge me all you want and keep the verdict to yourself. You may call me a loner, weird, different, but inside myself is a place i live all alone, its a place i go to for renewal. It is my heaven. They laugh at me because I am different, I laugh at them because they are all the same

My Dream Home