What do you miss when you miss home
There were three things that I missed from home when I was in Malawi - on the whole, quite a low number considering the vastly different country and culture I was living in. Of course I occasionally had a pang or a craving for something, and sometimes I stumbled across a reference or a story which reminded me of someone back home who would’ve appreciated it. But these moments were usually gone in an instant, and they did not form the substance of my mild and whimsical homesickness.
The first thing that did has to be religion. Maaaaan, I was not prepared for all the Jesus chat. Religion wasn’t even on the agenda during our pre-departure training, and yet this was the single most difficult issue for me and something that on occasion made me miss home and the personal, invisible way in which northern Europeans deal with their religion, or the lack of it. For an atheist with a noticeable anti-theist streak, adapting to life in a very openly and enthusiastically religious country required so much patience, conscious mental detachment and reserves of zen that I am astonished and a little bit proud of how well I fared in the end.
The problem was how religion (Christianity in particular) was constantly thrown in my face, at every turn, every day. I cannot recount how many times I had this exact conversation with locals:
Are you a Christian?
- No I’m not.
But you go to church?
- No I don’t go to church actually.
But you believe in God?
- Mmhhnn, no I don’t.
...But have you heard of the word of God?
- Yeah, yes I have.
Can I teach you about the word of God?
- Mmhn no thanks, that’s ok.
The concept of no religion did not seem to exist and was difficult to explain - it for instance prompted my host dad to inquire whether he could convert me to Christianity. I refused politely, but he wouldn’t relent until I explained to him that I have A. received religious instruction, B. decided it wasn’t for me and C. this decision has brought me peace, thank you very much now get off my case (I don’t think he ever really dropped it. Whenever he could throw in a biblical fable or verse or a bit of preaching in my company, he took that chance without failure).
I remember it was the sudden omnipresence of religion which induced my very first night-time rant at Jess under our shoddily tucked-in mosquito net (bedtime venting turned out to be a wonderful coping mechanism whenever either of us was overwhelmed or frustrated about anything. Roommates are a brilliant invention). It was quite early on and I hadn’t yet realised how big a part religion was going to play in my daily life Malawi. Our weekly programme of Monday morning bible readings, opening and closing prayers for meetings and field work, breakfasts and dinners in the warm glow of evangelist TV shows, choir practice, church on Sundays and regular religious conversations was overwhelming to me, coming from a culture where this amount of exposure to any religion can only be attained if you very actively seek it out.
I’m not suggesting I’m so intolerant of religion I can’t deal with it at all. I knowingly signed up to volunteer for a Roman Catholic organisation, I’m obviously more than happy to work with people of all faiths and none, and I attended a couple of services in churches and mosques. Yet what made the religion issue difficult was that I had very little control over the whole thing because I was both living and working in a religious environment - we’d finish with a closing prayer at work and I’d walk back home to the familiar blare of T.B. Joshua’s prophetising on the telly (again, an interesting fellow to look up, I recommend a google). I would’ve been happy with one or the other, but the combination of both was taxing in the long run, and I occasionally found myself fantasising over the possiblity of spending a couple of days without Emmanuel TV or a single word of prayer.
And this is probably where the second thing that I missed from home comes in - as much as I loved my host family, I found the lack of independence that resulted from living in a host home a tad difficult to reconcile with at times. Malawi is a traditional society in many ways but especially when it comes to relations between the young and the old, and young people rarely, if ever, call their elders by their first names. So, we called our mum ‘mum’ and Jess and I were her daughters and we quickly slotted into a proper family dynamic. Me and Jess were, in a way, like two teenage girls who have curfews and designated household chores and need to ask for a permission for nights out. The limits on personal freedom were surprisingly annoying, even though I very well understood why such rules were enforced and could see the situation from their perspective - if I had two silly young foreign ladies suddenly move into my house I would definitely want to keep tabs on them.
Finally, and fairly predictably, I started missing certain foods. The funny thing is that I didn’t miss any Finnish foods as such, none of the homely ruisleipä, makaronilaatikko or nakkikastike that could remind me of my sheltered Scandinavian childhood - no, no, none of that. What I really missed was pretentious hipster cuisine - olives, cheese, hummus, salads, berries, cheese, cheese; a selection of things you’d normally have in the summer with a chilled glass of white wine, or in Stereo in Glasgow. I also started missing variety in my diet, because unless you want to splash some serious cash in Shoprite, the choice of different foods is quite limited in Malawi. The staple is nsima; stogdy, sturdy and rather bland-tasting white lumps cooked from water and maize flour, eaten by hand with a ‘relish’ - chicken, beef, eggs, beans, greens or little pungent smelling, sun-dried fish from hell known as usipa. You can swap the nsima for rice or cassava, and that’s about the extent of variation in Malawian cuisine as far as I know it (some additional dishes include futali, a mix of sweet potatoes and groundnuts, soya porridge and white bread with sugary tea).
It might sound like a lot on paper but really, the country mainly runs on nsima - relish is expensive and it’s cooked and eaten very frugally (for instance the idea of using an entire one onion at once was rather novel, as everyone uses max a quarter when cooking a big meal). I also noticed that my nsima-to-relish ratio was significantly lower than that of locals, who’d normally finish two lumps of nsima with a handful of relish when I could only manage perhaps one small one (affectionately baptised as baby nsima). It was an unpleasant reality check to realise that you’re used to better things than someone else, having been brought up in an abundance of a variety of flavourful foods and learned to take them for granted (because the reason I couldn’t finish two lumps is simply because it doesn’t taste very nice when you have to distribute half a bean per mouthful if you don’t want to eat plain nsima. Also, this may have partially been because two nsimas is a lot of food, and westerners are used to eating small portions but often, whereas Malawians eat huuuuge amounts of food at once).
So - religion, food and personal freedom were the cornerstones of my occasional longing for home. Whenever I travel abroad for long periods of time, I find it interesting to see what it is in particular that I end up missing from home, because it’s always different and reveals a lot about myself and the country I’m in. For instance, I wrote in this blog that religion was constantly ‘thrown in my face’ - a rather emotionally charged way of putting it, and I think the expression itself (which fairly accurately describes my experience) uncovers the level of difference that exists between Malawian and northern European societies regarding religion. I don’t think any Malawian would concur that religion was ‘thrown in my face,’ because it’s an important part of daily life and talking about it is to be expected. Religious institutions have often been the most reliable ones, so they have become the focal points of social organisation - an alien configuration to someone coming from a place where a lot of services are provided by the state, and where going to church wouldn’t be the first thing on my mind if I wanted to, say, make new friends.
Another interesting point related to this is that what I mean by ‘home’ has changed a lot in the past few years, towards a more intangible direction. Even though Finland is where my home is according to my passport, there was very little that I missed from there in particular - nothing, in fact, apart from a brief but intense period of wanting to speak, read and hear Finnish. And I don't want to resort to memes with pseudo-deep quotes about 'home is where the heart is', written in cursive font and superimposed on a chrome-filtered picture of Alaskan mountains, but it did take me by surprise how strong the feeling of being at home is once you get there.
After leaving Malawi, the first of many moments I realised I’d come home was at a Glaswegian flat I’d actually never been to before. I’d just got back, stuffed my face with bagels, brie and salad and was lying on the bed in a stupor which can only be induced by carbs, cheese and intense travel fatigue. Eve and Gee were there too, chatting away about something I was too tired to care about let alone take part in - and listening to them chatter, lying scattered on the bed next to me was when I was suddenly hit by a very warm, familiar feeling of being at home.
And the funny thing is that now I could write a blog post similar to this one about all the things I miss in Malawi. This is the inevitable catch-22esque consequence of leaving your heart in distant places and with people you’re not certain you’re going to see anytime soon.
