Twenty years ago, two years before I married, after my first four years of nursing, I returned home to my parents for just under two years. I was homesick. I had this yearning, wanting to return to my roots. Once I’d settled down after a month, I began working at the small private hospital in my hometown. It was a strange time. I thought I would fit in, make friends, find a boyfriend, get married and live happily ever after. Well, I hoped so at least, but most of the kids I’d gone to school with had left town, although a few were still around, already married and starting to have babies. I was twenty two at the time. It was small town Zimbabwe – before most of the white farmers were kicked off the land, and there was a sizeable white community. Still in the minority of course, but a community nevertheless. A (white) community that had it’s social cliques. The church folk. The club/pub folk. The farmers. The teachers. I would say those were the main the groups. There’s nothing wrong with that, birds of a feather flock together, people with similar interests and backgrounds tend to stick together. There were few other white nurses around and the ones around were all older than me and married (or divorced). So why didn’t I socialize with the black nurses? I certainly got on better with them. Well, for the most part, whites didn’t really socialize with blacks much. Even in 1994 in Zimbabwe. It’s just the way things were. We lived alongside one another peacefully enough, but at the same time we lived worlds apart really. During my time back home, I often bumped into people I’d known growing up, whether as patients or around town, but I just didn’t quite fit back in. I’d struggled to fit in growing up anyway, so why did I think things would be different as an adult? I was still quiet and shy, and quiet and shy people don’t really fit in easily. Even though I was struggling to find a place for myself, I was home with my parents and that was the main reason I’d returned, to be with my family. My parents, my sister. In other ways I grew. I learned to appreciate classical music and gardening. For a while, I appreciated the quiet and solitude that small town life offers. After a while though, I began to feel impatient. I didn’t want to end up a miserable old spinster with no friends. So, after eighteen months, I left again. I went back to where my adult life had begun. A place where I had actually fit in, but I had left because I was homesick. A place that I now call home.
Life is strange though or maybe it’s just the wheel turning, so to speak. When I was teenager, and I felt constrained by small town life, I dreamed of living in New York City. Why New York City? Maybe because I’d watched Fame, and had stars in my eyes. Instead I ended up in “Maritzburg” –
Rants and Raves of an old hen. 
Several million Zimbabweans are exiles – many of them feel the way you do and many of them want to return home one day. I never left – I was too scared I may feel like they do every day! Unlike you I came from tiny Esigodini and moved to tinier Fort Rixon. Now, stuck in Bulawayo I find its too big for me. Perhaps this country is so awesome we are all spoiled forever more!
I dream sometimes of living in Zim again – but it’s unlikely, I think I am more South African now, being married to one and having worked with the same hospital for just over 18 years. A part of my heart will always be Zimbabwean though.