Home is only a feeling

Home is only a feeling

One of my favourite lyrical lines is by a band called Stornoway (amazing band, check them out) and it goes "Home is only a feeling you get in your mind, from the people you love and travel beside."

Home doesnt have to be the house you grew up in, the town you lived in. For me, I feel that home is a state of mind. My childhood house with my family will always be classed as a home or somwhere I would call home as a kid but these days, I feel like I left home when I got on that plane back to England a few years ago, and I feel like I only really found home for me when I was 17, my 2010 summer in a safari paradise.

Here is why my home is a feeling..

I never really felt at home untill I visited South Africa for the first time when I was 17 back in 2010 where I did a project through a company called The Leap. I lived on a game reserve just outside of Melalane in Mpumalanga called Kwa Madwala, not far from the Kruger Naional Park.
It was an incredible place and had 4 of the big 5 African animals living freely inside their reserve. I was lucky enough to wake up each morning to Hippos wallowing in the dam in our front garden, the sound of the wild elephant heard moving through the bush, crushing small trees in their path. It was so full of life and at night the place came to life with the crickets song that echoed over the reserve. The smell of the blood red mud underneath my feet being heated up in the sun.
I was heartbroken when I had to leave and I swore that I would never let it leave my heart and I never did. I found myself going back out there when I tunred 19 to go and work with a friend I met at the game reserve, working with her and her horses, getting them ready for being trail horses where we could take guests out on safari on horse back. It was an incredible experience to mix my love for working with horses and in Africa. I was in heaven for a short while. I went out to South Africa again the next Febuary for a few months and I really felt at home when I made a great circle of friends but then there was some issues where I was working so I ending up making my own way to the Game Reserve where I did my first project. I had the pleasure of working with some amazing people, I was involved in minor Lion operations, working with the two tame elephants and taking trails all over the reserve on their 17 beautiful horses. I had the interesting experience of rounding up a fully grown white rhino whilst on horse back one day and also had a run in with 3 fully grown lions. THAT is definately an experience I will be sharing with my future children and granchildren.

Since leaving South Africa the last time, there's always been a hole inside where something is missing. I hope that one day (If I dont find my place in Australia) that I end  up back in my safari paradise.

Where's your "home"?



Laurie.