The dream of those in the Diaspora is to return home

OPIYO OLOYA PERSPECTIVE OF A UGANDAN IN CANADA

Every time I have returned to Uganda as I did twice early this year, the question often most asked is: When are you coming back home?

For one brief moment this Sunday as I peered through the glass door at my sons Ogaba, 6, and Oceng 11, playing happily in the white snow on our back porch, building a snow fort, another question connected to the first one came into my mind: How do these boys born in this cold wilderness survive in the village in Amuru in northern Uganda? Dwoogo paco, an Acholi phrase that means returning to one’s ancestral home is after all the unspoken dream of many in the diaspora. For if my family is returning home, it will be to settle in my village in Amuru. It is in Amuru that I find myself truly alive, awake to the sounds and smells of the earth, the warm air on my face.

Of course, it is easy for me to think about returning home. But what about these two young fellows, seeing as they are so much a part of the Canadian landscape, the snow and all, what would it mean to uproot them to bring them home with us? For sure they know that their grandparents live in Uganda and Kenya. We talk to them about being Africans, explaining their Luo roots through ododo, storytelling and music. But they are Canadian children who look at the world in a certain way, talk in a certain way, like certain things, and eat certain foods. Okay, all the food they eat here can be substituted with food in Uganda or Kenya. In fact, what they eat is no more different than what children their age would eat in Uganda.

Ogaba enjoys kwon ugaali, the soft bread cooked from cornmeal. It is something he picked from his mother’s side of the family. He also eats an enormous amount of fresh ngor, green peas, and sukuma wiki, sautéed mixed vegetables.

The ngor is my kind of food, something I enjoy eating a great deal. He can survive in Amuru or in western Kenya where his maternal grandma lives.

Oceng is an entirely different person altogether. He is a picky eater, choosing carefully what he puts in his mouth. He will eat with gusto food he likes and spends a good chunk of time chewing on food he does not like, hoping that in time he does not have to eat it at all. He might be difficult to feed.

But really, the issue is not even about food. It is about choosing the kind of future our children should live. It is an easy choice to make as an adult because underlying the premise of living abroad there is always the idea of returning home. We think about it, plan it, work for it, and count the months and years before it happens.

The experience of living precariously as strangers in a foreign country, the difficulty of starting afresh, the systemic problem of finding jobs, and of struggling to keep afloat with mortgages, is all made bearable knowing that there is opportunity to return. The idea of returning home is not simply a question of affordability, but an ideal that is nourished and nurtured over time. The problem of course is always time. People grow old, people die, children are born, and the cycle of life marches on relentlessly to its own drum. One cannot sit around planning one’s return while doing nothing else. As an immigrant in Toronto, I have witnessed and attended many birthdays as well as a fair share of final good-byes as we bury members of the community.

What amazes me at those times is the optimism that both the first and second generations carry on their faces. The first generation immigrants speak of having weathered the worst behind them while looking forward to returning home. The younger second generation also speaks with optimism about things they are doing, the good grades they are making at school, the college graduations to come, the wedding bells tolling. Nobody speaks about how these two generational gaps can be bridged or even whether it should be bridged at all.

But sometimes, just for a glancing moment, the two generations are united as one. You could see in the way they jump up, the young and the not-so-young, to dance to traditional Ganda, Luo, Ateso, or Abanyakigezi songs. At such times, every one is caught up in the reality of the moment. The youth feeling connected to their ancestral cultures and the older folks dreaming about the days when they will return home.

Then there are moments like the one on Sunday when the two boys are happily playing in the snow. How do you uproot them from this life which, after all, is the only one they know? I do not have an answer, but I have a camera.

As I snap a quick couple of pictures both boys turn to give me their biggest ‘cheese’ smiles. At that moment, it is hard to picture them anywhere else except frolicking in snow in sub-zero temperature. The world of which I dream returning to is foreign to them, completely removed from their immediate experiences. But, one of these fine days, their world will meet my world—in Amuru no less.

Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca

Source: New Vision