We begin the long journey southward, leaving Kano and heading towards Plateau State. Can I possibly describe it? Its people, its landscape… all of my best growing-up memories are drenched in its smells and its sounds, the heat, the Harmattan dust, the tapping of rain on tin roofs, the lightning flashing against the flat Savannah, Fulani boys wandering with their cows close by, military stationed in the forest with their weapons slung over shoulders and their smiling, friendly faces; women selling oil-drenched food at the side of the road, the dirt-mounds of farm land for miles, miles, miles… and then the flame trees, the baobab and mango where villagers congregate to escape the sun’s heat, those sweet excited faces of children running and calling out to me with their wide smiles and dark, beautiful eyes.

I watch out the breezy, open window of the van that carries me over pothole-ridden roads as my beloved Jos draws near. Low bushes pass, one after the other for miles, miles, miles…and then the mahogany trees that line the dual-carriage way, the tall wispy white eucalyptus… We stopped briefly on our journey through the forest, climbing wearily out of the hot, sweaty vehicle, wandering a bit to stretch cramped legs. Standing beside the road, I touched the delicate, new leaves of familiar shrubs, breathing deep of the dusty air and remembering. Surrounded by low trees and dry grass, I found a West African thorn tree. How beautiful they are; so tall with arms like frilly green ferns. But draw closer to it, and you’ll realize that nestled in its lush, lacy leaves are thousands of long, sharp thorns. I smiled to myself at the memory of them, and carefully plucked two of its thorns to place in my book.

Eventually we began the drive up the Plateau. Coming in from the North was a gradual climb…somehow it didn’t feel like ascending. Approaching it from the South would have been steep, and you’d realize how high up the Plateau really is. It truly is beautiful. This stretch of the journey seemed to simply crawl by.

At long last the van pulled into Jankwano compound, kicking up dust from the final stretch of dirt road that wrapped around the hospital, winding past houses, small stretches of farmland, cinderblock walls, an occasional chicken wandering carelessly…ending finally at the tin-roofed house with the flame tree stretching over it that held a myriad of my memories. I let the excitement of returning take over, and I wandered the house and its yard, soaking in each scent and letting the memories flood.

It was then that I noticed the very slight but tensely-wrung feeling of disappointment in the very hollow of my stomach. How long had it been there? I didn’t understand why it was there. I was surrounded by all the beauty of my home, reunited once again with this treasure I had held in my heart and had ached for, and yet nestled within my joy of returning was disappointment? It was creeping up, growing stronger. As I wandered, rediscovering all my memories of home, it felt as if I knew nothing about this place; as if I were a stranger here, a mere visitor.

Suddenly I understood: I didn’t belong here.

I could not have imagined that it would be so difficult to return. How very much like that thorn tree my dream of home had turned out to be. Its lacy branches seem riddled with thorns. The longer I grasped this feeling of not belonging in my home, the more devastating it became. Thorns… On my beautiful tree.

Perhaps I stayed away too long. I had held tight to this dream of returning, held it so long that while I turned the memory of it over and over again in my heart, somehow I must have grown away from it. Is it possible that despite my heartache and longing for home, I had quietly made a place for myself far away, over oceans, far from home? Always with me had been that dream of home, that hope of getting it all back one day, that desperate yearning for everything I had once lost. And now, to finally return and to discover that it is no longer mine–that perhaps it never was mine at all–how desperately lonely this feels.

“We never quite belong,” Momma said to me once, and although I knew it was true, I never thought it would hit me this hard. To straddle two worlds, never truly belonging anywhere, hanging onto memories that I hoped would somehow reconcile the torment in my soul… I’ve returned, but home is gone.

One evening as I sat in my old room, I heard the wind begin to stir outside. Unable to resist that delicious taste of an approaching storm, I went out into the night. I stood behind my parents’ house, my bare feet pricked softly by the wet grass, moonlight bathing my skin, the darkness of the night embracing me as I stood, still, my face turned up at the sky to watch the clouds. As the wind brushed its warm breath over my skin, it whispered to me, rousing my calm. I loved being able to close my eyes then, to feel the wind stir my hair, feeling my T shirt ripple against my stomach…It was so familiar, so warm, so peaceful. The swishing of treetops, leaves shuddering, heavy, heavy wind. My heart sank. I was no longer that same girl who ran through this very grass many years ago, tasting so many other approaching storms, but I could still drink deep of this moment. Oh, God, this–this is why I love this country–the beauty of it, the richness. How moving is the very wind! It stirs every tree and cries with the loud rustling of leaves and branches, the slush of banana palms whipping each other, the very scent of your rain drawing closer. Is it possible to hold home deep in my heart–to carry it with me just as it is–even though I myself move on? I had thought it was gone.

Momma came out then and stood by my side, drinking it in as I did, wishing she could sit in the night and feel the wind for hours. How perfect it was, just standing there, enveloped in the night winds. That night I remembered what it felt like to BELONG here–to be comfortable in my country. Momma said that we’re supposed to feel uncomfortable–because we are always changing. Nothing stays the same.

I closed my eyes again as we stood, breathing deep of the storm-soaked wind, and listened to my spirit whispering with the storm. Ubangaji, let me pass through this softly enough to still savor my last weeks in this country that so tenderly holds my heart.

Nothing stays the same.

I ache. These immoveable memories–those of landscape, of sounds and smells, of storms and dust, of trees, of grass, of sky–perhaps these will remain. Perhaps, somehow, I will find them unchanged by the malicious onward stride of time, a thing I myself have been altered by.

I guess the funny thing about this long journey home–this passage that many of us spend our whole lives making–is that you never quite arrive. Try as I may, I can never fully return to that beautiful place that once held my heart. I can simply reopen my book now and then, run my fingers over the West African thorns I placed there, and remember.