Visiting Is Never the Same

Playing bao at Mvuu Camp in Liwonde

The first five or six days of our Malawi trip we spent in resorts – favourite holiday places from years past. They were fun and neat to show my husband and children, but I felt torn and uneasy.

watching elephants in Liwonde

As usual, people asked me, “Where are you from?” I didn’t want to say Malawi because I felt I had no claim on it anymore. I could say, “I was born here” but that’s ancient history. When someone asked, “When was the last time you lived here?” I had to think, and the answer – “21 years ago!” – made my connection to Malawi tenuous at best. Even my parents left 8 years ago – also the last time I visited. That’s almost a decade.

walking in Blantyre

Here I was in Malawi, the place I love most in this world, but I was a tourist. It was a new experience and I did not like it.

When we entered the south, specifically Blantyre, then I started feeling more at home. There were changes, but I could still find my way around. We met with friends, even stayed with a good friend of Mum’s one night. Visiting with these people, I could see myself living there again. It was so exciting to point out places and recall memories for my family – to reminisce with Mum about this or that.

Then we drove by our old house. Well, the plot where we lived our whole time in Malawi. But there is a towering wall with barbed wire around it now, and a solid metal gate. All we could see was the tip-top of the old fig tree we used to climb in the corner. Even now, when the image comes to mind, I can hardly breathe for shock and an aching sense of loss.

We stayed at a missionary’s house just up the road. The house is the same design as ours was. I could walk blind-folded through that house, as long as there was no furniture! Staying there for a week was nightmarish. I could almost believe I was home, except when I looked out a window.

high walls

I used to perch on the sun-warmed wooden sill in the dining room to talk to my dogs down below, or watch a Laurie in the bird bath under the eucalyptus, or peer through our sparse hedge to see who the dogs were barking at on the road. In this sister-house, the view of a dull grey cement wall through an imposing double set of burglar bars was a sucker-punch to my belly every time.

Sunset at LNP

In front of the sister-house

Using the front door was another anomaly, to say nothing of the prison door with 3 locks that we struggled with each time we left the house. In our old house, I remember using the back door exclusively. It had one lock and it was never locked during the day.

What did all this teach me? I will never go back to visit again. If we go, it will be to live.

That is a hopeless dream, though. I know that living there as an adult is not the same as living there as a child. I’m not sure we could adjust. And then too, my son might well disown us if we even suggest living there.