Machona Awakening: home in grey matter

Returning to South Africa after thirty-eight and half years of exile turned out to be a shocking anti-climax for me. With this book I share blog articles I wrote as I introspected on this unexpected reality. In the process, I discovered a liberating truth about the land of my birth and myself: home is a state of mind, and the heart. I came to understand that if societal and individual growth and change do not keep pace with each other over time, the dynamic of a sense of home gets broken for the individual. The point being that the place called home is often a given space, with rules to regulate human behaviour. The latter to ensure as much peaceful and harmonious existence for all as possible; that, within the given and natural contexts of the roles each one of us has to play in the processes of social engineering and management. Rules of the country, as manifest through its social engineering and management institutions and processes, both influence and design its culture. The culture may either be conservative or progressive. It is for the individual to think and decide if the culture is congruent with their objective and subjective aspects of their definitions of a place called home for themselves. If the individual loses or cannot have the sense of home, they can either seek to change the rules through lawful means, or simply go away - countries don't move, people do.People are different, and such are their backgrounds and resourcefulness capacities as well. Therefore, people will react, and relate to given circumstances differently. Likewise, people leave their home countries for a myriad of variable reasons. However, if asked, I would, from my personal experience, advice Diasporants who have lived abroad for at least three years to stay where they are and live happily all their days. Let the Diaspora be their new home. The assumption being that they thrive out there. They shall also not be a burden to their new homelands. Rather, they should be law-abiding, value-adding members of society. They must never seek to impose their own ideals and faiths on the societies which have given them new spaces called home. Humility and gratitude are the keys to successful integration and living in the Diaspora. If the Diasporants have to return home, anyway, they must avoid by all means doing so broke. If they have to help people in various ways back home, they must do so in such ways that they do not become overburdened and poor themselves. Burnout is the worst enemy of hardworking Diasporants. Some get caught up in the glory of sponsoring the building of schools and hospitals back home. At the same time they have to provide for their own and family's upkeep in their second Diaspora homes. This is often not sustainable in the long run. Not everyone becomes super wealthy in the Diaspora. It is important to learn to change and adapt to the new environments, seeking to give and get only the best of values for a mutually peaceful, harmonious, and progressive existence for all in the particular spaces everyone calls home. No one has the right, or power to bully his/ her way into forcing the Diaspora to be a place called home in their own imported terms. It does not, it can never work. Not even in the name of God, regardless of the form he appears and is worshipped in. Sure, if God is demonstratively the God of love for absolutely all of humanity, bring him on, then Amen.