I've been contemplating my roots again. Where I come from and how I got here, geographically and in terms of who I have become, am becoming, as a person. Prompted by the move to the country and the purchase of a plot of land amidst the rolling green hills of the English countryside.
I've been contemplating the practice, the meaning and the experience of reclamation. The principle of taking back what was taken away. Not necessarily this particular piece of land but the fact of land dispossession and the importance of dismantling ideas of who owns what, where belongs to which group, and all that divisive discourse.
I've been endeavouring and reminding myself to practice kindness, forgiveness and peacefulness, when I've encountered imagined or actual signals of said division. I've been trying to focus on the simplicity, the fundamental universality, of our connection to the Earth, over and above all the damage, separation, casting out and warring over. Getting beneath the stories of past hurt and committing to living a different way that isn't bound by those concepts, notions, systemic ways or toxic ideas.
And then I spotted some national flags and a pile of faeces appeared. Near and in the territory that I've made my home. My mind went into overdrive. Then I settled myself, checked my perspective, engaged in a reality/Earth check, and remembered what matters. Keep walking. No big deal.
Moving to the country was a big deal in many ways. Uprooting from city living, which had been my primary habitat for most of my life; leaving many good friends and family at a further distance; and most of all, facing the prospect of being the only person of colour in a landscape populated, though not necessarily cultivated by, primarily white folks.
When me and my partner decided to move to the place we did, we looked up the census and no surprise, the population wasn't very diverse. No matter. That has often been the disappointing but largely unavoidable norm. I was raised in a village where me and my sister were the only Brown girls for most of our time there. My sister, bless her youthful naivety, thought it was a complement and a joyful celebration of her difference when children in the playground placed her in the middle of their circle and sang (or should that be bastardised?) Boney M’s 'Brown Girl in the Ring'. The malicious undertones became clear not too long after when she and I experienced racist abuse, both physical and verbal, and grew to be anticipatorily defensive whenever we went out, especially when shopping with our Mum and understandably, sometimes rightly, suspected people's unfriendly attitudes to be rooted in xenophobia and ignorance of every shade.
I got used to standing my ground. My parents taught me how to believe in my right to place and space. Not just in the responses they encouraged me to offer back to my tormentors, but from the very fact of the ways they built and lived their lives, having been displaced from their home countries of Tanzania and Uganda - countries, notably, where their parents settled having migrated there from Pakistan, encouraged by the Imperial lie veiled as a welcoming promise of a better life, courtesy of the odiously named and toxically orchestrated British Empire.
I eventually left the Midlands for a life up north in Manchester, then London, then Bristol, cities with cosmopolitan bubbles that offered greater diversity and real promise.
I have less need for physical communities, now in my 40s and having found the friends, sanghas, and groups that truly matter to me that I can count on no matter where I am. So being a minority in the rural and relative idyll wasn't a deterrent, albeit a slight concern, when it came to realising a long time dream of ditching the rat race.
And then I spotted the St George's flags. Then the crap. One flag is a few hundred yards from our home on an agricultural plot, another outside someone's house that I passed on one of my daily walks.
The faeces, which I immediately assumed to be someone's dog that had been allowed (purposely, I wondered, because I have had this happen to me before so it wasn't an irrational thought) to poop in our garden, turned out to be a collection from the local cats who had clearly just decided it was their toilet.
The flags, I don't know the motivation or the people behind that (yet). I'm trying not to anticipate or prejudge, but knowing the common subtext of somewhat forceful nationalistic pride, I can't say I'm not a little troubled by the prospect of a frosty encounter. About that though, I've resolved to care less. And to keep on with my intention which is to care more for what I have control and influence over, and more worthwhile and impactful regard for. Which is to say that my focus is on how I tend to my life, "my land", as one of the ways I go about what I do for the sake of reducing harm.
That applies to lifestyle choices that are a conscious resistance to and a step away from the call to be a consumerist cog in the wheel, a lifestyle systemised and institutionalised by this country where I'm partially from - and which trapped and wrecked too many family members who were forcibly sucked in to it, due to little choice and lack of support - and more towards the Naturally aligned, harmonious and humane.
It’s a peaceful protest of sorts, not engaging in anticipated conflict, and spending more mental and physical energy on cultivating the positive rather than fighting the negative (though I’ll obviously do the latter if and as required, just not in advance in a way that leaks and steals my energy).
Every walk I take, every tree I encounter, every animal I enjoy the company of, every time I open my lungs for a deep glug of fresh air, every trip outdoors where I gladly see neither people nor traffic, I think about and thank the people that got me here, that made me in every sense, that enabled me to be right here, right now, living this life.
I believe I do belong. This is where and what I longed for. This is what I care about. This is what I'll tend to. That's what my ancestors taught me. That's what my family taught me. When they were moved, when they moved, when they started over, when they persisted, with strength, courage, kindness, care and skill. Even and especially those whose hearts and lives were broken in the process. I remember and keep telling myself and speaking my intention into the boundless space:
I am here because you left
I am now because you were then
I settle with ease because you were uprooted
I take my time because you were forced to hurry
I endeavour to be gentle because you experienced force
I push because you were pulled apart
I stand grounded because you (were) moved
I take root because you (were) ruptured
I reclaim the whole from the pieces of all of you
I get to grow because you planted seeds
I live in awe and the wake of your love and loss
Sweetness made bitter made sweet again
Alchemised. Returned. Softened. Reclaimed.
This land belongs to us all.
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