I lived here for two decades, lectured at the university for 15 years, and like the interviewees came to regard myself as being West Indian, and proud of it.
youtube.com/watch?v=yZEV7PG...
Watching old friends. . . . - Positive Wellbein...
Positive Wellbeing During Self-Isolation
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Watching old friends. . . .
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BrentW
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Hi BrentW, I really so enjoyed that! You may remember I'm a Barbadian citizen by adoption and my husband's from Guyana. I love and identify with all things Caribbean and to be honest, left half my heart there when I left to come back to UK. I largely feel like a displaced person whether I am there or here. It's one of the follies of making a permanent or semi-permanent home in another country for a long while. Thank you for sharing that! It's a very real thing!
Hi Callendersgal. Like you, I left a huge chunk of my heart in the Caribbean when I left -- which I had to do for medical reasons. Try as I might, I do not yet feel settled in the UK, even though I grew up here. I put down deep roots on Trinidad, and they are still there. Meanwhile, I returned "Home" to a country that had changed hugely while I was away, becoming a foreign country to me. All I see is a palimpsest of where I grew up in the sixties and seventies. The coupling of the strings tying me to Trinidad (I am still supervising four PhD students there) with the sense of being a stranger in a strange land in the UK sometimes fills me with great longing and sadness. I have to fight hard sometimes to rise above that, sometimes even fighting back tears, and be grateful knowing that where I am is the best place for me right now. Does any of that make sense?
• in reply toBrentW
It all makes perfect sense BrentW. I too came back reluctantly for health and social reasons and I've had a heavy heart ever since. I too find it hard to recognise the country I left, or of my childhood, and one more thing which pains me is the knowledge that change continues in the Caribbean too, so that were I able to return, it would also not be entirely to that same country I remember. (There's a life lesson in there somewhere!) I'm lucky in that a really good friend from my days in Barbados, also had to return here shortly after I did and we comfort each other when suffering Caribbean homesickness. We share old secret memories which binds us together in the most amazing way. I'm also really fortunate in having a close link still, through my husband. Even though I know in my heart I won't be making a permanent return, I console myself that maybe, via my husband, I might.
I wish I had such a friend, Callendersgal. But I have my wife, who is from St. Kitts, who keeps reminding me that I am West Indian now. She aims to visit her mum there as soon as possible. She knows, though, just as you say, the St. Kitts that is, is not the one of her youth.
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