Coat: Mango | Top: Topshop | Trousers: Mango | Boots : Mango | Scarf: Mum’s

Hello guys!

It’s me. Haha bet you’re like ‘who?’ Me! Your favourite Zambian UK blogger 😀
It’s been so long that I wouldn’t be surprised if you had forgotten me. It’s been over 10 weeks since I last blogged. April 15 I posted my favourite smoothie recipe and then I left. The smoothie didnt kill me in case you were wondering! I just left. Metaphorically took a break from my usual life routine and physically packed my bags and left the country
(As you can see pictured above. I want to keep the blog flowing so it’s important for me to include this part of life too. Sorry for backdated photos, but I have so much summer content ready to go up after this!)

So, where did I go?

I went home. I set off on a journey at the end of April. Truth be told, I wasn’t really sure what I was searching for on the journey but I was desperate to find something. So off I went ready but not sure what for.  And it was epic. Zambia was like being on a rollercoaster on the highest cloud in the sky. I ate (maybe too much), I cried, I loved, was forced to forgive, forced to seek, forced to be strong and vulnerable at the same time and forced to accept myself, fully.

I think as an immigrant, I’ve always been wandering around searching – mentally or spiritually for something in the back of my mind, for rest, for home. But where is home really? Aren’t we all looking for somewhere we belong? The latter could not ring truer for me. I did not realise how much I needed to be back in Zambia, immersed in the culture and surrounded by my people until I was in their midst.

I’m not so sure when I got so confused, it must have sank in somewhere between my mid-week breakdown at work before the weekend we flew out and halfway through our flight to the motherland. My read for the flight was Maya Angelou’s Mom & Me & Mom, a book I’d wanted to read for so long but had not been mentally ready to do so. I had this sneaky suspicion that I wouldn’t be able to hold myself together through the book and you must always trust your instinct because BOY WAS I RIGHT! I mean I knew the book would affect me but I did not realise how much until I was bawling my eyes out on the Boeing aircraft all the way to Nairobi. I literally cried for over 4 hours, the passenger next to me went from being worried to being scared, and didn’t know what to do (I’m so sorry Sir) but I couldn’t stop. I guess it was two things:

1- The beginning of healing for me, from the emptiness that winter’s depression left

2-  The manifestation of all my fears wrapped into one when Maya in her book, takes us through the death of her mother and having to cope with that.

I’ve found that Ms Angelou’s books are therapy to my soul, her words are put together in such a way that they pierce the most buried layers of my soul to find me hiding underneath then hold my hand walk me to the surface. It’s therapy for me.

My first weekend in Zambia’s capital Lusaka set the tone of my trip perfectly. In fact I think that for the next  post I write in the series, I will began with a line from that day – ‘I hope you find what you are looking for.’

x MC 

• Part two to come next week
• Follow my instagram page for all my Zambian adventures @Metiyachique