10 September 2009

Nomad-ness

The last weeks I have been traveling ‘in the West’. Our family spent a one week in Essex, UK with family and Janneke’s sister Ada and family. Although Ada was in severe pain due to cancer, we had a good week in beautiful surroundings. Then one week Netherlands, followed by urgent travel back to UK for untimely death and burial of Ada. Then back in the Netherlands again, spending time with family and friends, to return Africa at the end of last week.

All this now finds me with a true sense of being a ‘nomad’. Nomadic people or nomads is defined as a communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are three kinds of traditional nomads defined: hunter-gatherers moving between hunting grounds, pastoral nomads moving between pastures, and "peripatetic nomads" moving between customers. Apparently there are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. It is said that many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but traditional nomadic behavior is increasingly rare in industrialized countries.

Well, I think the amount of 'nomads' is growing again. We have ‘third culture kids’ and actually whole groups of people live somewhere else then where they were born, or stayed a couple of years ago, or even living in such fast change that they stay but the environment moves. And those are all nomads!

I am a nomad, and my home is where my head rests. Eh... where can it rest?