I wrote and shared this imaginary letter about five years ago. I have
since reflected, slightly that is. Read and enjoy my minutely revised
letter to Mawbe and I hope you will reflect on this journey with me:

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The Homecoming:  A Letter of Reflections (Revised)

Dear Mawbe:

It has been more than umpteen years and I have since reflected.

I’ve reflected that home has become an imagined abode for me, evolving
through layers of memory, nostalgia, and desire. My rendition of the
desire for home has become a substitute for home itself, which
embodies the emotion that is attendant on the image on my mind.

My home is the creative interstice: between Gambia as it was when I
left years ago - in whom belonging was ambiguous and contradictory and
from whom it was necessary for me to escape - and a Gambia of
un-convoluting heritage; Gambia as it perhaps could have been or might
become later on. The confluence: of the past and the future; my memory
and my imagination.

Therein lies the shrine I call home because my home has been very much
longed for but irretrievably absent, I have to feel it as if it is
tangible. And for the sake of sanity, I will live and I will write -
in terms of absence, of absent and or questioned present time. Not for
any imagined or reminisced existence or rather an absent presence, but
for my crummy recall if you wish of Gambia, my home, sweet home.

Gambia my home is a reality that is a fulfilled expectation, a dream;
whereas my current abode is an expectation in the making, a dream,
which has become the reality I find me in. The grass is greener on
this side we said. Yet my new world seldom fulfils these expectations,
and my old world is ever growing sweeter with distance, and this
sweetness is making me more and more of a fritter.

 Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say. Yet I am engaged in
reticence, with an imagined space that cannot be reached. That which
defines me: The Gambian émigré! The hustler! The exile! All in me.

Mawbe:  of many of my losses as a hustler perhaps one of the most
devastating is the loss of that which I may not even realize I may
still have but had at home. That which makes Gambia home; the fringes
I took for granted, that which I had recognized yet lost; this loss is
as irretrievable as the desire for its restoration is insatiable.
However, Gambia is everything that my current abode is not. It has
morphed to be obscenely unbearable, almost unlivable; it is insecure,
the sanctuary of the corrupt, and the familiar; where living on the
edge can - at least from a distance - become shrouded in nostalgia.

It nonetheless struck me, after a few years of hustling that I had
given up something very precious in leaving. Given it may only be
nostalgia, but in my mind’s eye my life before hustling seemed somehow
charged with meaning. Even though every day had been a struggle
against howling moral head winds coming from all directions. I had
lived amidst the stark differences of good and evil, surrounded by
magic and mystery, myth and superstition. Nothing in hustle world
could ever compare with so powerful a set of social intoxicants. In
exile, my soul is next to being impoverished.

After all Mawbe, this may all be a sweet thing to end. I may have to
put myself through the cold, sweats, and sicknesses of withdrawal to
help me start anew; to experience that wild rush of social
intoxication as if it is for the first time. Coming home to Gambia is
going to be so exhilarating, so fulfilling and yet so daring. So help
me God.

In exile, I may not be the happiest man alive. Yet I wake up every
morning in the midst of my own dream. There was and this is the point
in my life that I have been dreaming of. How do I express such a joy?
The joy of the hustler’s dream. All I can say is: even though such
happiness may be unique, even though I know in my heart it can't last
forever, even then I would wish for nothing deeper or greater. I would
wish for nothing like what prevails in The Gambia today - of myths and
the mythical; of hype and the hypocrites; of cons and toadies.

Let’s admit it Mawbe; of late, it has been much easier to find reasons
to celebrate the dystopias in Gambia than to welcome the utopias
therein. Are we in any position to choose? This is true not only in
the context of what may or may not be deployed and processed in our
minds, but also because our expectations do not usually correspond to
the realities therein. The level of satisfaction in the living
conditions of Gambians cannot rival the desire I have activated in my
mind. The mental energy I have expended so far on the image of Gambia
in absence has, on many occasions, proven to be incommensurate with
the reality of Gambia in the presence of my absence. And so help me
God, I am coming.

The Homecoming

In homecoming, Mawbe, I may derive strength or tragedy. In homecoming,
I shall meet with my broken self, to be brought back to life. Giving
me the fulfilling word of life. Making me climb the last hill of the
sun. I will be certain; by such strength my triumph is assured.
Without such strength I will be denied the triumph and be left simply
with one more - and perhaps the ultimate - addition to a collection of
my broken self. I know, I know, homecoming can be an ambiguous and
disorienting experience, with joy and relief tempered, even eclipsed
by other emotions such as disappointment and unfulfilled expectations,
disillusionment and anger, perhaps.

My experience in hustling has proven to be an interminable yet
hopelessly inadequate preparation for my re-encounter with home. My
mind’s image of home - the interstice: between the past and the
future; my memory and my imagination - has propelled and perhaps lured
me home and will probably abandon me to the reality of something
different.

Homecoming for me is more like a dream - I have the usual fantasies of
return and recognition - an expectation perhaps. Expectations that all
my unformulated questions will be answered and my fragmented memories
will cohere in a recognizable pattern. That my homecoming will have
meaning and lead me to some kind of understanding. But what if my
dreams and expectations suddenly become an uncomfortable, unexpected
reality?

I am not looking for an answer Mawbe. I have a life which has to be
continued, and perhaps that continuation is in itself something like
an answer or as near as one would ever get to an answer. It is the
resolution and the integration - of my dream, my expectation, and the
reality; of the exile, the people, and the places; of the hopes and
the disappointments thereof.

You don’t have to tell me Mawbe. I know, I know, I have been changed
by the hustle, spoiled if you will. That smooth polished diamond has
resorted back in the rough. Pressure makes diamonds, I must say. I
must tell you though that some of the essence of the process of my
change shall be left as a legacy in the hustle and some I’ll have to
bring home with me.

Naturally, I am anxious to have something to show for the years in the
hustle, all those years of absence, years that are varied and
intricate in themselves. I could bring the world back to you in
Gambia; the burdens and the insights of being away. I would return
with the scars to show, precious gifts to give, and I will definitely
see differently. I will return as a divided self.

In my homecoming Mawbe, I will probably have a different perspective
and a fresh insight of home, just as my stay away from home did me.
My homecoming will show, that which was previously subconsciously
absorbed and taken for granted as home, then yearned for and
re-created from a distance, will become strange and unfamiliar. Home
will be consciously seen and felt as if for the first time. When I
come home from the hustle, I will probably be overwhelmed by the
feeling that I was seeing Gambia in the clear for the first time. As
T.S Elliot puts it: “And the end of all our exploring / Will be to
arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time." I
will know The Gambia for the first time Mawbe. For the first time.

However, there will also be much that I will return without. I know
for a fact that I will return without any real appreciation of what I
am going to come home with, without, or to. Frankly Mawbe, I expect
home to have been irremediably changed in or by my absence; I expect
to come home and find it waiting, as before, as I remembered, changed
perhaps, unchanged may be, and every stage in between. I expect to
find both continuity and change, but more importantly, my returning
will have little or no effect on either.

Moreover, I expect not a hero's welcome, no large cheering crowd to
await my arrival, no ritual slaughtering of the fattened ram.
Actually, I may have to rescind such a reception because I know people
have grown up, grown old, and died; that lives and relationships have
changed, and my long absence will probably be forgotten. Absence does
meander through cleavages in attachments and connections, yet absence
would have turned me into a stranger who has little life left in that
place called home.

Mawbe, my homecoming is to come home to you, to come back to you; to
find my recourse in you; to return my being to you; to surrender my
hustle to you, notwithstanding there is as well, no coming home, no
coming back, no return. My homecoming is to arrive at Yundum, to trek
the muddy roads of summer; to beat the dust off my shirt; to sweat off
the treacherous humid rays of the hot Gambia sun; to start over again
and again; to contemplate picking up the thread in a place that in
some ways can never be returned to and in other ways was never left.

My fear Mawbe is that over these years, home itself and the reasons
for my return may have become more complicated and ambiguous than they
seemed to be. I am hoping though, that my homecoming will provide a
different perspective not only on Gambia but also in exile. I am
hoping and praying that my coming home will precipitate a continuation
and further evolution of the dialogue between my home, sweet home -
Gambia and my exile; my hustle. So help me God.

Your dearest, in dreams.

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