The theme of this season is Home. Tuliza shares what Home means to her. Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
The theme of this season is Home. Tuliza shares what Home means to her.
Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
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My sense of home is a continually forming one. Um, for one, I am not from the place that I grew up in and I've never visited the country of my father. I was born in the country of my mother. And my father is Burundian, and I've never been there. My mother's Congolese and I was born there, but I was not Congolese and as a family, we moved to South Africa.
When I was five years old, I have struggled to feel. At home in South Africa, and I think that's an ongoing condition of being in a place you do not come from. And I think that for me has always raised questions about whether I would feel a sense of home either in the place I was born or the place of my father and I haven't had the opportunity to go back to the DRC or to to go to Burundi ever.
And I'm now in my thirties, so that's been quite, um, it's been my whole lifetime that I haven't been, um, home essentially. But as I'm maturing, the one thing that I'm constantly being made aware of is that my body remembers where I come from, even if I don't, and there's been instances where. You know, I move a certain way and I get commented on that.
That kind of movement is like that of a Burundian woman or is like that of a Congolese woman. Um, I also have noticed a kind of affinity to certain food types and to certain flavors, um, that then later I find out is. Food that is typically cooked in Burundi or food that is typical to the drc. And so I'm making sense of home as being in our DNA and that perhaps our body constantly gives us clues about what and where home is.
And I think that home can even be defined through food, you know, that like. Our system tells us what food is familiar and our system can tell us which seasonal cycles are familiar. Um, I think of my disdain for cold. It feels like survival every winter, and I've always wondered whether that's had to do with my having born, being born at the equator.
Um, and so. Yeah, I wonder if, even though I might not have any clear sense of what home is, my body does and is perhaps continually guiding me in articulating and languaging what home fundamentally is for my constitution. So it's, it's an ongoing, it feels like ongoing research. Um, but that is my thoughts around.
Home it is, um, a living and ongoing question, an inquiry. Um, and although as a result I've constantly tried to make sense of how to at least produce a sense of settle settlement, um, because it's very different to producing belonging. I think I've, I've, um, definitely. Experienced feeling settled, but not necessarily feeling a sense of belonging.
Um, and that for, for the moment has been enough, um, because constructing notions of home and belonging have been really challenging. Um, yeah, so it's, it's an ongoing question. All the topics in this season touch back to Stone Seeds of Exchange. If anything in this episode spoke to you at all, I always love hearing thoughts and expressions that can be birthed from single collective stories as I'm on this journey to learn, heal, and design from this space.
Please note that this is also a personal invitation and not everything may be relative to you. Carving your own space is so central, whatever that may be. Remember to follow or subscribe to this podcast and you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at a For mek. Join my quarterly newsletter app, www do anisha mok.co.
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