Distant Places

I have traveled to distant places,

Untouched to my world and my being.

  It was in those places that I saw more,

More of who I am and more of who I am not,

More of where I have come from and more of what I know.

It was in these distant places that I saw clearer my world and my being.

It was as if being away opened my eyes.

I have traveled to distant places.

 And it was there where I learnt more,

More about my world and more about my being.

xoxo

Chido Dziva Chikwari

This post was inspired by a recent vacation and while it was inspired by physically being somewhere else I have drawn a little more from it than that. My family and I traveled to the USA and spent 3 amazing weeks there. We went to 5 States and literally saw as much as was possible for us given the time. It was an amazing experience. Although we have traveled to many other places together as a family and separately for most of us this was the first trip to the US. It was an entirely new experience and for me personally it was unlike any of the other countries and continents I had been to before. We were awestruck by the massive infrastructure, the roads and the buildings. We were amused by the different accents and names for stuff and inspired by the  numerous varieties of food. It was a lot!

However, being there also made clearer to me a lot about home, Zimbabwe, about myself and the things that both define and matter to me. This was not so much a new lesson but a lesson reinforced. I have never felt more Zimbabwean than I did 7 years ago when left my beloved home and family for University in the UK. Before that I had never wanted for a Zimbabwe Flag or harbored cravings for a plate of sadza with beef and vegetable stew. I had never yearned to speak nor hear my mother tongue, Shona, spoken. It was there, away from home, that I for the first time truly ‘felt’ Zimbabwean. It was there that I acknowledged more than ever before where I came from and had to ascertain that I was Chido. It was then, outside of my comfort zone, that I firmly defined for myself who I was and what believed in.

There is a quote by Clint Borgen which says, “When overseas you learn more about your own country, than you do the place you're visiting.” Just like that university experience this trip illuminated a lot of things about my country Zimbabwe and my country as in Chido. It showed me where Zimbabwe could be; that we have the potential to also ‘be’ great like this. That we at present fell so far short of what was normal for others, be it roadwork or infrastructure. That while others, who were already so far ahead of us, where busy building and developing we for decades had stagnated. While I already knew this, as do so many other Zimbabweans at home and abroad do too, it was a different thing to actually see it. It was heart-breaking to see that while we appeared to be different we were not that different. For me personally it reminded me of the things I am passionate about. About why I came back home. In that distant place I was reminded of ‘the dream’ and why it was/is so important to me. In that place that I did not know and had never been before I found a big part of myself again. 

The moral of this blog post and I hope you can see it as well is this - To know something else can help you understand in different ways what you have always known. To see an alternate reality can help you see better or understand a current or past reality. Go to Distant Places: Be it Physically, Emotionally or Spiritually. Explore those untouched worlds. It may be in those places that you find yourself.  This has certainly been my experience.

Keep Shining!