Finding home

For most of my adult life, being a nomad brought me freedom and joy.  Now, with stops in rapid succession, it feels like a turbulent river on which I find myself. Earlier, this river of life allowed my boat to calmly lap through its meanders; now I set foot on land at every bend.

In recent years, Bayanga and Berlin alternately formed a home and in both places I gathered around me fine and special people. In my absence, many of my friends in Holland sealed their love with countless babies, houses were bought and multiple fishbone floors were laid.  That different life for that other person and mine further away changes the dynamics and needs of friendships.
In vibrant Berlin, I became friends with like-minded and inspiring young women with equally fascinating trodden life paths.
A challenging existence in the remote rainforest requires individuality from a person, something that immediately connects. It is there where days fill with adventure and friendships quickly deepen.

A plan was drawn up in which an entire year of doctoral research was allowed to be carried out in the distant greenery. My life's wish in optima figura. Things run differently that day in September and the naturalness of every morning together is no longer there. A diagnosis hits us as a family right in the heart, with a seriously ill body predicting an early departure. A departure from a full life filled with love, psychology, art, pioneering in (disability) care, inspiring meetings and an inexhaustible source of creative initiatives which has not yet come to an end. It should not have been this way.

In times of sorrow, the bags are still packed and left for adventure 3.0. This time with my most faithful partner of this lively life: the dog. To the land where in the meantime I had not only lost my heart to nature and its people, but also back to where love blooms. Where the previous mission I walked on feathers to the runway and my heart leapt every time at the sound of an approaching plane, now it remained with an unrequited longing for that other. As the rain clattered violently on our roof, (unfulfilling) desires in the evening filled my head and home.

Far away from the suffering at home, I once again run after goats, vaccinate the village dogs, sprint on the sandbank and the days fill smoothly. There I once again find happiness in being. Burdened happiness admittedly.Where before I sailed away from the Dutch shores, I return early to where I left long ago: the parental home. I temporarily leave Africa behind and move in with those who earlier let me go out into the wide world.

With weekends in the Dutch countryside, during the weekdays I now land in Greifswald.
A home, surely "home is where my heart and dog is".