the surreal homecoming

Only a week ago I spent my last night in Warren Bank, Milton Keynes, my home for the last 15 months since my return from fieldwork in July 2011. Now I am spending the first weekend in my Hilchama flat in Cape Town. The past six days have been pretty surreal although I can feel myself drifting closer and closer to reality and the days pass by.

When I walked through the doors of my flat on Monday morning it felt as if I had been transported into a parallel universe - everything looked familiar but somehow it was also completely strange. Did I really choose that colour for the walls in the living room? What was I thinking? So many times I had fantasized about what it would be like to be 'home' again, to be in my own flat with all it's space and light, freeing me from the restricting and suffocating living environments in MK. And yet my first reaction to being in the 'space' I had represented as my 'true' home while in the UK was to wonder how the hell I could have painted the walls a pale lilac! The space is the same, but I have changed and my needs, wants, perceptions have also changed - and just as I had to do in England I realise that in order to call this space my true home again I will have to make it my own again reflection who I am now - not who I was four years ago.

And this strange moment acted as a marker for the experiences that shaped the rest of my week as I rushed around trying to make decisions about kitchen appliances, applied for broadband services, assessed my security needs, shopped for food and household goods, resolved ex-tenant queries and wished I could simply drive to Ikea but equally grateful I call call on a host of supportive friends and family as I navigated these different tasks. The PhD took an unfortunate back seat and I only managed to spend a miserly hour or so working on my supervision notes on Friday.

I'm positive though - deep down I'm positive - at the surface I am uneasy, I haven't settled, I feel insecure, I am ambivalent - but I know this is where I need to be right now. This is where I need to be to finish my PhD and I know I will settle and it will be ok eventually.