The Green Hills of Home

It's been eight months back "home" and I'm no closer to really understanding my connection to this island of my birth.

I suppose I'm a colonial in some odd way, with the blood of Africa somehow entrenched into my Phyche, for I cannot shake the deep marks that Africa has left on my personality. Not that I would want to do that, I love that aspect of my history.

Life in Africa as shaped me as surely as my English heritage has, but does it really matter?

I'm not sure, I haven't figured that one out yet. As much as I'd love to claim to be beyond these aspects of life, I'm not.

A personal history matters a great deal, it defines your personality, your outlook and thus, in a generic sense, your future.

I'd given up England as being my Home many years ago, having assimilated myself into life in South Africa, but below the surface there was always the Englishman. The full extent of what that means may never return, because again we come back around to "what does it matter?"

It matters a lot, it really does. As much as I'd love to declare myself "a citizen of the planet", life doesn't work that way.

I have these deep stirrings, this ancestral memory perhaps? - Bollocks I hear you say - but I truly feel like I belong in this land, which I never really did in South Africa. This is the land of my ancestors.

Everywhere I go, I'm reminded that this is home - there's no alien feeling at all, but often there's mild confusion and amusement as I try to figure out the huge gaps I have missing in my personal history of England.

I can chat with my fellow work mates and friends I've met and have a connection, but England and the UK have changed dramatically in the years I've been in South Africa. We have the common ground of youth - the TV programs, the cultural icons of years past, but 20 years away is a long time.

Sometimes that gap means nothing, other times it's like a chasm which will never be crossed.

This is the fifth time I've shipped back "home" and in some ways it's been the most difficult.

The brief history?

1976 (aged 8) - Family moves from England to South Africa
1978 - Family moves back to England
1981 - Family moves back to South Africa
1984 - Parents divorce, Mother returns to England
1989 - I return to England
1990 - I return to South Africa
1993 - I spend two months back in England
1998/2004 - A few weeks back in England
2005 - I return to England

Am I English, am I South African?

Well, right now, I'm English - adopt or die...