WHAT I LEARNED WHEN I WAS AWAY

As i made my way up to the village’s only mosque and as I walked there my mind there was a flashback during the evening stroll we would all go on. Back in those days, there was no Internet, and video games hadn’t made their way here yet, so we had to use our imaginations to keep ourselves entertained. We’d play football,hide and seek, freeze tag- i.e where if the person who is “it” tags you, you have to freeze where you are. Another participant can tag you to unfreeze you.

Just the other evening I was commenting to a friend of mine how the village’s roads are strangely deserted now. You barely see a soul. Back when I was a child, all the kids would be on the streets. We’d be out playing hide and seek, playing hopscotch and other traditional games. DSTV and European football leagues came along, however, and took the village’s soul with it.

The evening walks were my favourite, especially during the December holiday when we would lay on our backs and watch the star showers. This is where my dreams were first made; it is here that I dreamt of travelling some day, it was here that i dreamt of going places and dream big.

 I also took a quick walk through the graveyard, which always serves to remind me of how fleeting life is; how people who also once called this home have long since departed. I saw the faces of many of my friend’s grandparents staring back at me from the epitaphs, a strong reminder of how quickly time goes by. It doesn’t feel like so long ago that many of these very people would be shouting at us for something we had or had not done.

After I clicked my final shots of the evening, I sat down to enjoy the sundown at Mt Borolle. As much as I love travelling to far and fascinating lands, I always ground myself here, in this humble village of Sololo. Yes, it will never attract masses of tourists or the attention of travel magazines, but its importance to me and my life story is unparalleled.

I joke that nothing changes in Sololo, but that’s not true. It does change. Buildings get older and crumble. People age and die. But the one thing that remains constant is that this is where home is, and just because I don’t physically live here it doesn’t mean that my heart cannot.