Calling Home

“When are you coming home?” friends often ask me, and my inevitable reply is a confused and sincere, “I’m not sure where home is.”

Gratuitous and mildly unrelated photo of my petting a cheetah

For those of us who travel, move more often than might be healthy and are perpetually itching for new international experiences—home is a tricky thing. Is it where family is? If so, that’s still at least 3-5 places for me. If it is where I live, well, I wasn’t living there this time last year and I won’t be there this time next year…should there be a time limit on home? If it is where the majority of the people we know and love are, then my home is on 4 continents.

When I first realized that I had no idea where my “home” was, I got a little panicky. That’s something that we are supposed to know right? That should be the most stable part of your life, I’ve been told. For someone with such a strong connection to a sense of place, this dilemma has frustrated and confused me for all of my adult life in which I don’t seem to sit still for more than a few years—or months. Today, my home is Clare, SA in my homestay family’s house with a little brother, sister, mother and father, family compound of another 15 people, 50+ chickens, the occasional goat, 10 or so cows, 3 cats, 4 dogs and 2 turtles (the grandfather has a bit of a menagerie). But in two weeks, it will be the basement of my old townhouse in Arlington with some of the coziest friends I know.

In an ideal world, I could bring every piece of what I deem to be “home” with me. Each day would begin with the waft of chocolate croissants baking down the cobblestone streets of Florence; then I would walk across the street in Sydney to start a trek to explore a new museum with four ladies who share my adventurous soul. We would stop for brunch to pick up the variety of friends who flit in and out of New York, probably at 9^th Street Market or Penelope’s. I’d spend the afternoon on a beach in southern Georgia playing in the waves with my family. Cocktail hour would be in a brilliant Atlanta restaurant with my high school friends who have a knack for knowing where good food meets good company. I would then carry dinner up with the Tazewellians and friends to their roofdeck in DC, pondering the ups and downs of the day over homegrown food and the perfect soundtrack. Then the day would close out with a hike watching the sunset over the desert in Arizona followed by a trip to the Thunder Pub probably with some unexpected mix of world traveler Thunderbirds. Of course at some point during the day I would have biked the hills of Rwanda and stopped by Gift’s house in Clare.

Instead, I am held down by that pesky thing called time and reality to be in only one place at one time. Thank goodness. Or I might have been too distracted to fall in love with each place I’ve been or to find the friends I’ve collected along the way.

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My first Sunday here somewhere in the four-hour church service it was said, “When we cross a river to prove we are alive, know that is not the end. But expect a bigger river next, and then a sea. But fear not. God is with you.”

I find myself at the other side of the sea again and those standing next to me are looking for hope. Our team wants to build fast. Our urge is to pack the days with meetings and deadlines, action items and milestones so that we can se results before we leave. However, empowering others doesn’t work very well when you are holding the reins.

The final phase here is Innovation in which we begin to put a business structure around the design challenge and solution selected by our team with community partners. In order to build properly, we need to step back and put the power into the community’s hands. The hardest part of this process it seems is patience and being sure to include the community partners in every aspect. This struggle is kind of amusing to me. The people of Clare had no trouble opening their homes to complete strangers, trusting a partnership with us while having only known us a few weeks and signing on to a project that we agreed only to help build—not to fund or implement. And yet, we have a hard time slowing down long enough to include them in the process. Ultimately, the partnership has been very successful. I owe that in large part to the maturity and clear-headed direction of my students who were happy to discuss the business in group meetings, but would only make decisions with community members present.

I would have felt like Clare was a part of my “home” regardless of our success with the business. But the fact is, we crossed a river with our community partners, only to find a bigger river, then a sea. We cannot journey with them as they build the business to full operational maturity. But I know that they will travel with us as a piece of what we will always know as home.