For me, the best time to go home has always been during the festive season. Christmas is by far my favourite holiday. No matter where I am in the world, the holiday cheer is constant. There’s just something about Christmas lights, jolly tunes and Santa that just feels so magical and special. Regardless of one's religious beliefs, the festive season is considered to be a period when we go home and spend time with our family and loved ones. But, what is home? Or more importantly, where is home? It’s a question I get asked a lot, and a question I’ve answered quite differently over the years.

The concept of a home for me has always been something difficult to describe. Not because I didn’t have one but because it was quite the opposite. I have had many homes over different periods of my life but which ones am I allowed to claim as mine?

Born in Maputo, raised in Egypt

I was born in Maputo, a beautiful city flanking over the Indian Ocean along the eastern coast of Mozambique. When I was four years old I moved to a place that felt more like home than my birthplace. This place had such a colourful and rich history that everyone knew about it no matter where they were from, whereas people would give me clueless looks when I mentioned Mozambique – which is where I was from. It felt like the most incredible place on earth. This place was Egypt.

Although I did not fully understand it at the time, this instilled a severe inner conflict of identity in me because I was raised to believe in the idea of your home being where you’re born and where your family is from. However, that was not true for me and a lot of my friends. What added to this inner turmoil was that many of the people I would come across did not know where Mozambique was located or anything about it for that matter. In order to validate the existence of my native place I would have to indicate neighbouring countries like South Africa or Madagascar on the map.

What do you do when people question if your home even exists? My home was a place most had never heard of.

Back in Mozambique, and making it feel like home

The house I would go home to every day was in Egypt but the place which should be my home, I felt little connection to. I visit Mozambique every 2 years and it felt more like a vacation spot than home. I moved back to Mozambique at the age of 12, and my home and life in Egypt became nothing more than a distant memory. The move was quite difficult because it meant abandoning everything I knew about the place that I grew up at and in turn became a big part of my identity. The things that made me who I was, were all foreign. The music I liked, the movies I watched, even the way I would speak.

Although I spoke Portuguese at home, I hadn’t had any formal education up until that point. I would stutter and take a breath so that I could translate the words from English to Portuguese. I could not communicate my thoughts and ideas the way that I wanted to and it felt wrong to not have mastered my nation’s tongue – even if it was one that belonged to colonisers.

It took me a while to feel at home in Mozambique, and although I identified as Mozambican, I always felt more like a global citizen. I enjoyed being in Mozambique but I missed Egypt; I missed my friends and the life that I had. I spent years mourning the life I could have had and a future that no longer seemed possible. Years later I learned that what I was experiencing was completely normal, this was just one of the consequences of being a third-culture kid.

Third culture kids are people who spent a significant portion of their formative years in a different environment and were raised in a different culture than their parents’ or the culture of their native country. If reading that feels confusing imagine explaining it. Many children, like me, experienced similar feelings and had no outlet to explore these feelings. In my case, I bottled it all up for years.

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All roads lead to India

It took me about 7 years to finally make Mozambique feel like my home before abandoning it again for the next chapter in my life in India. Growing up with the idea of the “American dream”, I had never imagined that I would one day consider India as my home, but it is. I moved to India for college and living there taught me so many things about the world and myself.

I learned that I could connect with anyone regardless of where they are from. India is a country composed of 29 states and 1.4 billion inhabitants. The country also has a large number of expats across the globe. When I would ask my friends what home meant to them, they would describe the culture around them, the food, and the people. I was the only African student in my college, that nobody else looked like or had a similar cultural upbringing. When I would encounter other Africans, particularly Mozambicans, it would always feel like I was back home. We would speak the same language and it went beyond words, it was a mutual understanding that came from living in the same place and growing up with a similar culture.

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Portugal and Japan

As I grew older, the concept of the home began to shift further. After my 18th birthday, I spent what felt like a lifetime, but was only a mere month, in Portugal with my relatives – and that experience transformed me. I felt very at home and comfortable. I knew my way around my cousin’s neighbourhood, I knew how to get to all the cool clubs, and I knew all the weekly specials. I realised that I felt so at home because of the people.

Reflecting now, I believe that’s always been the case. I miss Egypt, Mozambique, and India because of the people. All of these places have been my home, but home was with them.I began writing this essay in India and ended up finishing it here in Japan. I sat with the idea of what home meant to me, and where I felt most at home. Each home had something different to offer but each home would not be the same without its people.