Home is not a place
the hardest thing i’ve ever experienced
happened to me when i was nearly 5 years
old i moved over 4
500 miles across the world from grand
cayman
a small island in the caribbean to
london
i don’t remember it very well but i do
know i felt sad and not at home
homer came was where i was brought up
it was where i spent all of my early
childhood it was the only place i really
knew
i had my wonderful friends audrey olivia
jessica and kitty and my little one
story
my first experience of being at school
the wildlife there was spectacular this
endless sandy beaches
and lush mangroves made me feel free and
wild
i also spent lots of my time playing
with the turtles at the turtle farm
watching the multicolored parrots in the
palm trees and scaring off the lazy
corners
that’s where my love of animals and
nature came from
both my parents are british so when we
first moved to england
all of my family said we’re so glad
you’re home something similar
but it didn’t feel like home my home was
where my friends were
where i knew i’d be safe the first place
we moved into was a cramped flat
where none of the furniture was stuff
i’d ever seen before
and i was told i’d live in this strange
place called england
until i was old enough to move to a
different country if i wanted to
lanton was a completely new experience
for me and it felt like the opposite of
cayman
cold warm wet dry by the sea inland
rural urban being snatched away from my
home at such a young age
has made me think about what home means
what are the things people need to feel
at home
for me home is a place where you can
relax a place where you can go where
you’ll always be welcome and safe
safety and security are not things
everyone can take for granted
although i am very lucky and come from a
fortunate background
my experience has made me think about
refugees the difficulties they
face
in december 2020 the international
refuge
rescue committee reported that one in
three refugees
held containment camps in their gene
islands were contemplating suicide
with serious mental health issues many
of these people fled their homes in
syria and afghanistan
because the area had become too violent
and too dangerous to live in
now they’re stuck in camps where the
conditions are terrible
there is no feeling of security
this must make them feel uncertain
because they don’t know if they will be
alright
they don’t have that place where they
know they can return to and will be safe
every two minutes in the uk someone
faces losing their home
exactly how many homeless people there
are in the uk is hard to know for sure
but in 2019 shelter the homeless charity
put the number at 280 000 in england
alone
and a worldwide grand total of 100
million homeless people
in 2015. every year a million people
call shelter because they are in danger
of losing their home
bad housing and fear of losing your
living space rob
your health security a good and good
chance in life
i can only imagine how not knowing where
you’re going to live would make people
feel
it is important we show kindness to
people we’re settling into their new
homes
homeless or in fear of losing their home
these interactions could be small things
such as
asking how they are or bigger things
like giving them some money
interestingly
where interestingly people who are lit
who
are from a different country that have
lived in a different place for a long
time
feel like that is where they are from
and that is where their home is
my friend who’s from france has lived in
england
her whole life and feels like she’s
british even though she’s ethnically
french
where you’re from is not defined by
ethnicity but where you feel your home
is
where you feel you’re from but not
always
wait where you feel at home is very much
to do with your experience
my aunt lucy has lived in new york for
10 years
she moved from the uk for medical
treatment in america
because she’s a rare medical condition
sometimes she’s in a lot of pain and
gets very exhausted so she can’t do a
lot
she lives in the west bridge where she
says it’s a great sense of community
which is really important to her
well-being being so far away from her
family
the pandemic has been especially hard
for her
auntie lucy says her home is in
is at the farm in leicester where my
grandparents still live
and where she was brought up
but she says she also feels at home in
new york
because it provides her with her
physical and medical needs and if those
aren’t being looked after
it can be very frightening
food is key to making us feel at home
for me
home is when i’m eating spaghetti
bolognese because it reminds me of the
fun times i had making it with my dad
loving a food isn’t just about what it
tastes like it’s also about what it
represents
the love that went into making it and
the traditions and cultures
it came from i live in london where you
can eat from almost every country in the
world
close to my house is a kurdish
restaurant called nandin
the dishes it serves come from when
perry one of the owners
led her home in iraqi kurdistan
because it was attacked by saddam
hussein’s forces
perry traveled from village to village
looking for safety
and collected regional recipes as she
went
perry moved to london with her husband
in 1995 and today she and her family
serve up all the recipes she collected
perry has brought some of
kurdistan with her and the food she
cooks so it’s a combination of things
food friendship family a neighborhood
that gradually made england feel like my
home this means
whenever we’ve moved house here which we
have done 11 times
i’ve never really been bothered by it
the house or flat i was living in wasn’t
the important thing
feeling at home was home can also be
where you
keep belongings that are special to you
they don’t have to be valuable
home is where my stuffed rabbits are
because i’ve had them for so long
and been through so much of them i also
love my books
because they remind me of all the
fantasy adventures i’ve been on
home is that place you know you can go
the place you can settle down in the
place to kick off your shoes
your home is like your foundation
without it you’re unstable
and you don’t have the anchor you need
to support you
you can live in a small flat or a
mansion but home isn’t about that
home is not a place it’s a feeling