Dear Oxford Dictionary, you're stupid please redefine the words "home" and "family", sincerely Anna

It is 1 am on a friday night, the day before my first shift of work at new job and my brain has decided that the " I need to write" is more of a priority than sleeping. Stupid brain...... the other week it was telling me " no Anna you do not need to write about white people oppressing black people.... sleep..... sleep it's good for you"..... really wish it was the other way round at this point but whatever.

Language changes with the times change, anyone who has suffered through high school English can testify this when trying to figure out what Shakespeareian solilloquay's mean. With the word Chav now being included as part of the Oxford English Dictionary, it has come to my attention that two more words need to be redefined, Home and Family because as the world has become increasingly more urbanized and globalized these words have changed to, they have become much broader.

Firstly lets discuss family. Oxford English Dictionary defines family as " a group consisting of two parents and their children living together as a unit" and " all the descendants of a common ancestor". First of Oxford you're stupid because you forgot Aunts Uncles cousins on both sides of the family and if you have gay aunts or uncles and who live in a country where gay marriage is legal what ever term they are suppose to be called. Secondly , there is a more than famous quote " it takes a village to raise a child", with urbanization more people are now living in cities, and with globalization the world is increasingly interdependent meaning it takes a city and a world to raise a child these days.  I have now lived in three countries and I am now more than comfortable saying that I do not have one family, I have many. I have my biological family, who have been with me through almost everything, I have my best friends family who when the pick me up from the airport it is like I never left and I always feel welcomed, I have the many men  women in Africa who cared for me, the rich and the poor, whether it was providing me with chappatti, water and tea after I drank too much Konyagi the nigh before or giving in a place to have a hot shower in their mansion and a queen size bed to sleep in after being discharged from the hospital for the second time. 

I have my university family, the people that go through  almost everything that I have been through as hold you up, give you a cuddle when you had a bad day, and revisit childhood with you buy building forts in your living room with you. I have my traveller family, which has a unlimited amount of members some that are closer than others.  In todays world, it is these groups from around the world or the city that you live in that raise you as you work your way into adult hood. For me, I believe that I have been raised by the world, my political opinions differ greatly from my parents as a result of the education I have received by various people, by the situations I have been in and buy the random people who have graced my life, if only for a minute. Family according to Anna, is a feeling of acceptance love and kindness with people that support you and love you no matter what your going through whether the be biologically  linked to you or people who feel they are related to you buy some special connection which is never ending.

Enough about family now on to Home. Once again Oxford, your stupidity never ceases to amaze me (why do people want to go to uni here?????) here it is defined " he place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household", and " an institution for people needing professional care or supervision:". I read an article about how to have a home without loosing your roots, the jist of it was saying how home isn't a house or location it's a feeling that you get  from something and it can be anything in the world. I could not agree more in all honesty, people often ask me where I am from, I give the semi complicated speheal about how I am a transient child of the world and I am often followed by the question " so where is home?" and I never know not to say, I use to think England was always home until I came back to Tanzania from travelling its neighbours and I got that home feeling I get when I walk through passport control and ever since then I have permanently been confused about this whole "home" thing. 

For me, I feel like home is a bit like falling in love(another thing that I am confused about), its like an electric feeling that goes through your veins that instantly sends you beaming from ear to ear and when you speak of it its all fondness of it. I feel like some people are born into a place, live there their whole life, move away from there for a bit and come back and get that special feeling. My cousin said to me once, " After living in London living anywhere else isn't like living in a proper place", so I assume London will forever and always be home for him. Some others find it quite easily, and some like myself, are searching and struggling for that special place to call home.

 I have decided though that I either have no  homes, or  I have many homes, just like I have many families, I don't like restricting myself to places or people so I wander and it's that wandering feeling that gets the electricity pumping, it gives me freedom. A lot of people ask me what my plans are after uni and if I will stay in Vancouver, and I tell them,  i'm probably not.  I like to leave places on high notes and I want to spend my uni days here, have good memories of that and part my ways with it and also that I want to go chase the sun around the planet. The I get this comment by some stupid people that I am forced to spend my academic career with " but BC is the only place worth living in in the world" and I just die a little inside and change the topic. 

For me the people of this world have raised me into the person that I am today, and I could not be more thankful for them, all of my families, each of them has sculpted me and continues to sculpt me into a better person each day and it is the places in this world that have shown me what will make me want to call a place home and what makes certain people want to call certain places home. So when I tell people I am going to chase the sun about the planet they say " what about your family". Well I have family all around, my biological family may not be there physically but they are still their and I still love them, then I have my other families. 

I don't expect a lot of people to understand my logic, but I am a strange child so I don't really care, it makes sense to me..... more sense than the idiots writing the dictionary which is suppose to be accurate.

I guess if you want to sum up my long-winded logic in a sentence,  about how family and home need to be redefined, King Sobhuza II, Ngwenyama of Swaziland sums it up pretty well,


" We are all of the earth, which does not see differances of colour, religion or race. We are all Kamhlaba- all of one world"

The Importance of Africa

Its now approaching 1 am on a Wednesday night.... or is it Thursday morning at this point... either way I don't give a shit and it's two weeks till summer break which is exciting and yet also terrifying at the same time. At this point it term it's just one  essay after another about, why the world is f**&ed, genocide, war, famine, UN being a load of bollocks, foreign aid not working half of the time and white people oppressing people then realizing " oh maybe we should stop doing this cause we are in serious horse shit with the international community and they're all saying its really bad to oppress black people now", and trends in Africans killing each other since independence.

As lovely and cheery as that all is, I don't feel like doing any of that at this point, I'm still going to write something about Africa. Most of you know by this point I am a massive Africa geek and write mainly of Africa because it's juicy and I, for some reason understand it in comparison to the Middle East where I have absolutely no idea whats going on and for my final essays have this exact going through my head, *i'm going to replace  two naughty word with something that sounds like it so I don't get a fiery email from my mother*.

 "duck duck duck duckiting duck pits pits pits mother ducking duck...... is that the right Mohammend..... is that the al-whats it's pickle...... *stupid Yemen(or alternate middle eastern country).... ISLAM WHY YOU SO CONFUSING!! *cries/slams head on desk* oh dear god please let me do alright on this essay". Repeat.

Africa has been a lot on my mind lately, partly cause i'm taking classes on it and partly cause it's almost a year since I was, there and I'm starting to miss home number 4... or is it 5? at this point and partly because I was listening to Damian Marley's album, "Distant Relatives" where the map of Africa is on the cover. Having written multiple essays on Africa in the past 3 years of my degree I am starting to realize how important it is.

For economists and the world market, it provides many of the things we need to profit from and use as intermediate goods, it provides you with that overpriced heated carbon rock,  you present to the "love of your life"( i'm not synical :P) at all, it provides pipes in your houses, oil for your cars, and part of your mobile phone, and that substance which keeps you alive and functioning in the mornings or helps you survive the last weeks of uni.

For women, it produces in the chief ingredient of that magical substance that gets us through our period,  or when men are being shit, otherwise known as chocolate.

It shows you how little you need to be happy. It teaches you how to celebrate "unity in diversity", something that a lot of countries lack. It takes this term, " unity in diversity", and applies to to every aspect of the African lifestyle, wether it be culture, music, society. 

 It's a place where they handle each problem the people face, they face it with dignity and are filled with pride when they overcome it. It is the land of warmth, both climate wise and culturally. It is the land of responsibilities and the land of respect. It is a place that is in your bloodstream. 

It is the birthplace of mankind. It is the land which shows you what you are suppose to be.  It is the land that tests you. It is the land that shows you what your are capable of. It is the biggest melting pot in the world.  It is the land where you cannot believe this is your life and makes you appreciate it.

It is the land of the people who fought against white domination. the land who fought against black domination. the land of the people who fought and cherished the ideas of  democratic and free societies where all people can and will live in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal that many hoped and continue to hope to live for ,and achieve. But if need be it is an ideal for which they are prepared to die for.

Finally, it is the land that shows you what love is and what it is to be love, wether it be for the peoples, the landscapes, the lifestyles, the animals or the simplicity of it all.

This is obviously generalizing, some countries may or may not embrace all these elements but the large majority of them do and I am sure you could apply some of what I have said to other parts of the world but for me Africa is all of this.

There is a quote I quite like " where ever you go becomes a part of you somehow"Anita Desai. Everywhere you go in life you has a special  place in you're heart, but there is something about Africa which makes it incredibly special and important to me. 

I was saying to a friend of mine that I missed drinking chai and eating chapatti in a wooden shack and eating an avocado on the back of a motor bike on my way to work, to which he replied, " I had no idea you were so African." I suppose I guess I am kind of part African, we all are really, literally in the scientific sense but also, for those who have been there and had an elaborate love affair with the place we have picked up some Africa tendencies during our time their (positive ones I hope not raping virgins thinking thats how you will cure HIV).

To conclude, I will leave you with part of a speech from Thabo Mbeki, second president of post-Apartheid South Africa. He may be regarded as an idiot by ignoring the HIV pandemic sweeping the country, but his words hear our genius.

"I am an African!

I owe by being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope… The dramatic shapes of the [landscape] have… been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day.

At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito. A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say – I am an African!"