COMMUNITY NEWS
DOVE GARDENS
By Bernie Munoz
‘Go back to your country’
he yells at me when I am crossing the road. No point in explaining that this is my country. This year, I became a citizen of this convoluted kingdom. After ten years of living, studying and working here - plus jumping considerable hoops, such as paying what could have been a deposit for a mortgage, passing an English test, a life in the UK test, being forensically scrutinised and providing a pile of records and evidence of my life worth a stone - even the Home Office agrees that I am asset to the place I have chosen to call home. But Bob Dylan’s singing ‘I pity the poor immigrant who wishes he would’ve stayed home’ makes me realise it is time for a change. Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds me that if a plant is considered a source of goodness, people forget that it is not endemic. The Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto is a perfect example. If you improve your place, you would even be claimed as a national. But how do you do it? I wonder whilst looking into Cabot’s statue in the harbour. His bronze eyes are fixed faraway. As in a trance. A vision. A private trip.
How to belong? Through participation and improvisation, whispers the anthropologist Dorothy Holland. You take part. You build relationships. But most importantly, you create something new. You also need to stop idealising, adds my husband. Focus on the present. Associating yellow with childhood is fine for a Cold Play song, but not as a filter for the past. Don’t let nostalgia get the best of you.
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By this time I have spent a year living in the council flats on Dove street. My neighbours are not strangers anymore. Some have even become friends. They have saved me a piece of cake for Eid. They have picked me up from the airport. They have let me use their hose. Their screwdriver. They have been kind to my children. While surviving the pandemic we have shared a little our vulnerabilities. Having someone to lean on is what makes the difference sings Bill Withers. All of this goes through my mind whilst picking blackberries. Sometimes only that sour-sweetness stops me from stepping into the abyss of homesickness.
