The Calm and Confusion of Coming Home

The air was light and moist, you could almost taste the fresh dew.

The only sound was the crushing of stones under my feet, as I ran through arches of overhanging bamboo. The lush green foliage could easily have made me believe that I was on a jungle path, instead of in the hills of concrete Kingston.

I wanted to keep up the pace of my run and catch up my uber fit Dad who was paces ahead of me. But, when a gap in the verdant huddle of plants part revealed a spectacular vista of green hills and a soft shelf of low handing mist, I couldn’t resist stopping and taking it in the view. As I wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt, I breathed in the ambrosia of Jamaica and looked out at the island that was both strange and familiar to me. I felt the calming of Jamaica’s beauty, in tandem with a consciousness of my boiling of my love-hate relationship with the island.

If it had been 10 years ago, at this exact same time, you would have found me running this on this very path, both literally and figuratively. I had ventured up into the Stony Hill area for an early morning run ten years ago. Back then, as the rubber of my sneakers skidded on the stones of this gravel road, my mind would have been scraping through plans to escape and never come back to Jamaica. I would burn fuelled by the desire of wanting to leave Jamaica for good, as my heart yearned for a life made up of more than what I thought this small third world island could offer.

Ten years later, I am here again, on this road and hashing through the similar schemes in my mind. This time though I have already been away for 6 years. This time, I have a foreign passport in my name and the right to live and work as far away from Jamaica as is possible. So why am I here? Again?

“Mawning Miss”, the pleasant greeting jerks me out of my meditation. The rugged dark skinned man has a face that tells of both hardship and contentment. He’s carrying heavy stalks of bamboo on his left shoulder and a machete in his right. He nods to me with his greeting. I smile, say my good morning and nod back. That one of the things that living in Australia the past few years has made me miss. In Jamaica, when you pass someone, especially on a quiet road like this, it’s normal to hail your neighbour, exchange a smile and make a connection. That never happens in Sydney, the city that’s been my home for the past 3 years.

I miss that.

The gravel road softens and turns into grass. A clearing suddenly opens up and I am flooded with the satisfaction that after a jarring mountainous run of dodging rain puddles for an hour, I am finally at my destination. The Hermitage Dam looks like a scared spiritual spot that the original settlers of the island, The Taino Indians, would have come to feel the presence of the their Gods. The sun has just risen and its rays filter through the trees like a sign of blessing from the heavens. A large dark green pool of water in nestled into a hillside of even darker green.

There is also a view of the city from here. But Kingston looks so quite and serene, it’s almost impossible to believe that it’s a city plagued by gruesome crime. Something I don’t miss. I feel safe in Australia. Even in Sydney, I can leave my doors open during the day and walk home by myself safely at night.

In the month that I’ve been here in Jamaica, the headlines have made me weep: A three year old child left at home by her parents was sexually assaulted, then hacked to death. A man went to his lovers workplace, stabbed her mercilessly to death and walked away calmly with his bloody clothes to the police station to give himself in. These headlines flash across my mind as I look out onto the Hermitage Dam and it's as if the water pooling then cascading down the stone face, could hauntingly be the collection of all the blood that’s been shed on this beautiful but scarred island. It is understandable that growing up in the country with the 6th highest crime rate in the world; would make a young ambitious woman want to flee. And that’s what I had managed to do.

I had been granted permanent residency in Australia and was now a citizen. I had immigrated there with dreams of building a beautiful life, far away from Jamaica. So why was I back here?

That question continued to make me heavy as I walked along the dam, finally catching up to my Dad. There was a path that led into the trees. It wound through a thicket of trees and smelt like rain. After a twenty minute hike, we reached a little waterfall. What a beautiful surprise, the cool gush of the water was calming and refreshing to sit by. My Dad and I walk around and explored it from all possible angles.

It’s been years since I have spent time doing activities like this with him. Immigrating made me feel the pleasure and pain of being away from my family: The pleasure of asserting my independence and escaping some of the challenges that have plagued us, and the pain of being away from people who genuinely love me and I can totally be myself around.

We leave the waterfall and backtrack down the gravel path to where we started the walk. For some bits of the four kilometre track, I walk with my Dad and we talk about nothing in particular. When I’m alone, I reflect on this very unplanned trip home: the fact that it’s the result of a plan to work in the Europe for the summer that fell through. Having sub-let my apartment in Sydney for the season, coming home to live with my parents was my only option for a while. I would be returning to Sydney in two months. I had already started brainstorming on how to resurrect my career in Australia. It was hauntingly similar to the plans that I made on this very road 10 years ago, to leave the brokenness of Jamaica for greener shores and a new start on the side of the planet.

So, that is the a practical answer, to why am I here. But since I live by faith and believe in fate, the question of “why do I need to be here right now,” barks at me as I complete the last few metres of the run.

It's 8am when we finish, having started off at 5am, I am both exhausted and satisfied. There is another beautiful vista of Kingston just where we had parked the car. I high-five my Dad at our mutual accomplishment. We embrace as we walk back to the car and I take another look at Kingston in its calm early morning glory. Before the complexities of the idea of coming back home start to cloud my mind again, I just stand loving this moment. Something about Jamaica, the land of my birth, and being with my family feeds my soul. I know I will go back to Australia, to continue forging my own path there. But for now, maybe I just need to be home. Maybe I need the fuel of the hearty vibration of my homeland, the rich warm dynamism that is Jamaica, and cascade of love from my family.

I still don’t know why am I here, but maybe for now I can rest in the serenity of the knowing that right now, this is where I need to be.

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