As I lay awake in bed in the middle of the night, just two days before Christmas and with only three days left before I set off for Uganda for the very last time, I found myself thinking about this question: Where is home? Am I leaving home – or am I going home?

I needed to get up and write down some of my jumbled thoughts as I reflected on my final visit to Uganda, on life, on what home means to me and other people, whether the title of my website and autobiography (a work still in progress!), “Crossing Cultures, Finding Freedom” is relevant, and on the event that is the reason for Christmas: the birth of Jesus.

Is home where you were born and grew up?

If it is, then home for me is in Mbarara, in southwestern Uganda, where I lived and grew up until I was 10. It’s where I was baptised and where my paternal grandmother is remembered in a beautiful stained-glass window in the cathedral next to the house we lived in (it was partly designed by my mother); and it’s where my father was headmaster for 13 years and is still remembered because the Workshops are named after him.

For Jesus, whose birth we remember at Christmas, his place of birth was in a stable in Bethlehem in Palestine which was then occupied by the Romans and is now occupied by Israel. It appears that the family stayed there for a year or so before fleeing south through Gaza and the desert to Egypt as refugees. But Bethlehem wasn’t really his home.

       

My teenage years were spent in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, but that doesn’t feel like home now – I no longer have any links there. Jesus and his family eventually returned to Nazareth where he spent his teenage years. Nazareth is now a large city in Israel whose inhabitants are predominantly Palestinian Muslims and Christians, a part of the world where there is still such turmoil and suffering.

So is home where you live now, perhaps? 

For some this Christmas, home is in a doorway on cold, wet streets, separated from family and friends for one reason or another – I think especially of the beautiful baby our daughter is caring for because his parents are sleeping rough. For so many others, home is now no more than rubble – as in Gaza, on the Turkish-Syrian border, in eastern Ukraine and so many other places. Jesus, too, was homeless for much of his life, with “nowhere to lay his head”.

But for me at this moment, home is a lovely, warm, safe house in Loughborough, in the middle of England, with Roger asleep in bed upstairs and my immediate family all living within 15 miles of us. This also happens to be the house which, at the age of 79, I have lived in for the longest period of my life (23 years now), having moved around so much over the years.

     

Loughborough (in a different house) was also the place of refuge we ended up in when the British Government moved all British citizens out of Uganda at a moment’s notice at the end of 1972 because of Amin’s cruel regime and insecurity. We hadn’t even heard of Loughborough but it soon became home as we made friends, our family grew and many came to stay or live with us.

Is home like a castle, enclosed behind fortifications to keep the inhabitants safe? Or should it be a jumping-off platform, open and outward-looking?

“An Englishman’s home is his castle.” I learnt that this statement surprisingly goes back at least 800 years! And it was enshrined in law in 1763: “The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.” What an amazing picture of the security of home, no matter how shaky the structure is! But how deeply is this attitude engrained in our culture, to everyone’s detriment? It’s no wonder English people have an international reputation for being unwelcoming and reserved, retreating into their homes and locking the doors against all-comers, made even worse by our present government’s drastic and inhumane efforts to keep all refugees and asylum-seekers out of the UK. (We actually leave the front door wide open all day when it is warm enough and only ever lock our doors when we go to bed, preferring that people should feel they can walk in and call out “Hello” and hopefully be sure of a welcome!)

But is home actually a place, or can it be anywhere? Is it more about a “feeling”, an atmosphere, a way of being, which is engendered by being open and outward-looking from within the security provided by family and friends? 

Where we live now is much more than the house we live in. Home is where I am loved, where I feel I belong, where I feel safe and settled, able to relax and “be myself”. It’s where I want to be if I am ever sick when away travelling. It’s where we can share what we have and our lives with others. Over the years, in different houses, we have had people in need and some fleeing from danger living with us – our home has been a place of safety. It has also been a place from where people, especially our three children, have moved onwards and outwards. This outward movement has actually expanded our sense of home as they, in turn, have opened their homes to us, giving us the freedom and privilege to walk in and call out “Hi” or “Yoga”.

So does this mean you can have more than one home?

Yes, I think so – from my experience. When I go to stay with friends, I’m often told to “Make yourself at home” or, in Uganda, “Be free. Feel at home”. I can feel at home here in Loughborough but also with close friends around the UK and abroad – especially in Uganda. Jesus showed through his life and ministry, death and resurrection that home is not confined to the place where you are born or live – it is something much more fundamental, involving other people and an openness and willingness to cross cultures.

Home can be wherever I “feel at home”, free to relax and be myself, to love and be loved, able to give and to receive, to share food together as well as hopes and fears – where I can be open and honest and enabled to grow. We have found that when we live too far away from friends to be able to just “pop in” but instead either have to stay with them or have them stay with us, the relationship goes much deeper as we can then share so many more aspects of life together: the chores and meals, going out for a walk or putting on scruffy clothes and slippers while we sit and chat, or even nod off, through the evening!

I have definitely got many homes, especially in Teso, a region in north eastern Uganda which I first visited in 1992 and have been deeply involved with ever since. It is where many of my closest friends live, many of whom are now brothers and sisters, sons and grandchildren to me. It is where I have several homes – lovely grass-thatched huts.

Teso is where the old mother of one of my friends gave me the Ateso name Arakit many years ago, a great honour. In turn, one of my Teso ‘grandchildren’ has been named Arakit Margaret. I am sad that because I am limited to a month traveling around Uganda, the schedule is tightly packed, with only one or two nights in each home – not long enough to visit everyone to say a final goodbye.

One of the biggest events of the trip will be the 20-year Celebration of TESS, the sponsorship programme I started in January 2004 for some of the most vulnerable and deprived children in Teso, at a time when so many were displaced and living in camps. The Celebration, on 29th December, is being organised by the Alumni (TESSAA). During the first 10 years, when I was so involved in developing the programme, visiting twice a year, I visited all the sponsored students (about 400 in those years) in their homes and schools and got to know each of them well, to the extent that there is a strong sense of family amongst us all and I am in regular contact with about 180 of them through Facebook. They are now all adults – most are married, many have children (some of whom are already in school), they all have qualifications and skills, jobs and homes. Some have worked or trained abroad, others have taken themselves back for yet higher qualifications. They all support younger relatives through school. Some have started their own businesses while others have set up vocational training centres for young people who have dropped out of school due to poverty. Already, they are making a difference to Teso.

TESS Alumni reunion in 2017

But the Celebrations on the 29th will be tinged with sadness. About ten TESS Alumni have died already (several after childbirth) leaving behind orphaned children. Some sponsors have also died. And TESS has also just died. When there was a new intake of trustees in the UK, with no knowledge of Teso, ten years ago, they excluded me from TESS and things started to go wrong. Due to bad decisions, poor communications and a lack of knowledge and contact with Teso, TESS has been in decline to the point that the current trustees of the UK charity have had to close TESS completely. However, that doesn’t detract from the amazing group of young professional and working adults who are bringing transformation and have organised themselves and registered as a CBO (Community Based Organisation), raising funds to help support the orphaned children of TESS Alumni. What little funds are left in the UK TESS account are being passed on to TESSAA for them to use as they plan for future developments in Teso. And a number of old TESS sponsors have recently donated £650 for TESSAA’s work. So the work and legacy of TESS will carry on through all those who were sponsored in the past. I shall be very sad that it will be the last time I see them all. The trip will be a rollercoaster of emotions!

Here are links to some background information elsewhere on my website about Uganda and Teso, diaries of my last three visits to Teso and relevant extracts from my autobiography which explain a little more about my life in Teso.

Does where you want your physical remains to be buried have anything to do with home and belonging?

Having begun with where I was born, I wonder whether our thoughts and wishes concerning what happens to our physical remains when we die perhaps also tell us something about what and where home is?

In one sense, it really doesn’t matter what happens to our bodies after death. And yet it does to most of us. Families going back many generations who have all been buried in the same English churchyard or in an African homestead gives a strong sense of home and belonging – belonging not just in the present but also to the past and into the future. I have often talked to my closest family and friends about what will happen immediately after I die and have written down my thoughts about my funeral. For me, there is an emotional link between where my physical remains will be put and my home. In recognition that I am so privileged to have homes here in England as well as in Uganda, I have talked to my family and friends in England and Uganda about my desire to honour that privilege by burying some of my cremated remains in England and some in Teso. I like to think that part of my body will have one more trip to Teso (taken by some of my family who have already said they want to do this), but unlike all my previous visits, that part of my body will then remain there permanently, in recognition of the generosity of so many friends in Teso who have made me “feel free and at home” and the many experiences of “crossing cultures and finding freedom”. I shall be forever grateful to the people of Teso for giving me more than they will ever realise.

Following my final travels through Uganda

I will try to keep up with writing a diary of my visit on here but am conscious that there are so many people to see, a lot of travelling and limited internet access so that it may not be very regular or frequent! If you want to follow our travels and haven’t already signed up to receive email alerts, you can do this in the column on the right.

The small group coming with me are multi-national. I shall be travelling with Felicity Lawson (one of my closest UK friends who has been to Teso with me twice before), Inna Kuprenkova (the Ukrainian refugee who lives with us), Patrick Andrianantenaina (a close friend from Madagascar who has never been anywhere else in Africa and who knows Inna and Robert), Kerstin Rohde (from Germany – she volunteered with TESS in Kapir for a year ten years ago) and Robert Okiror, a Teso ‘son’ who will accompany us throughout. Another highlight will be the traditional Introduction (marriage) ceremony between him and Maggie in his village home in Apapai.