Hiraeth

The Mango Tree by  Hugh Allan Yearwood,. Bumbury Ameriandian Settlement, Mabaruma, Guyana. Detail

“I am, more importantly however, a permanent resident of the human race and no matter where I go, I’d like to think that I will always belong.” Says Tricia Yearwood in her article, "What It Means To Be A Guyanese Emigrant"

Wise words to end this honest and, at times, soul tearing piece on how leaving the old country is only really accomplished physically.  I know this ache intimately that she writes about “…my eyes began to ache with the same disconnect …”. I became very familiar with this constant feeling of ‘ache’ and ‘disconnect’ during the 31 years that have passed  since I left Guyana.  Then one day this spring, a Facebook friend and ex- British Guianaian introduced her circle of diaspora friends to a Welsh word that finally allowed me to breath in and out more freely. Hiraeth. 

Wikipedia says it has no direct English translation and that the University of Wales, Lampeter attempts to define it as homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. Describing hiraeth as a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past.

I connect better  with The Urban Dictionary that says:  Hiraeth is a longing for one's homeland, but it's not mere homesickness. It's an expression of the bond one feels with one's home country when one is away from it. “As soon as I step over the border into Wales my hiraeth evaporates. I am home.”

Cricket forever (Hugh Yearwood title). Street cricket, Georgetown, Guyana. Photo credit unknown from the internet.

This poem by Tim Davis makes an attempt at defining it.

 Hiraeth (©Tim Davis, 2007)

Hiraeth is a Cymraeg (Welsh) word which doesn't translate well into English. It is a deep longing for home. This poem makes an attempt at defining it. It is pronounced with two syllables. The first is like the English here except that the r is stronger. The second syllable is like how a mathematician would pronounce i-th as in the ith row of a matrix. You could also say eye-th.

 With a last name of Davis, it should be no surprise that my Davis ancestor was born in Wales in the early 1600's. I found this out several years after writing this poem.  The westward theme is in the poem because going home to Cymru (Wales) means traveling west (from, say, England).

Hiraeth beckons with wordless call,

Hear, my soul, with heart enthrall'd.

Hiraeth whispers while earth I roam;

Here I wait the call "come home."

Like seagull cry, like sea borne wind,

That speak with words beyond my ken,

A longing deep with words unsaid,

Calls a wanderer home instead.

I heed your call, Hiraeth, I come

On westward path to hearth and home.

My path leads on to western shore,

My heart tells me there is yet more.

Within my ears the sea air sighs;

The sunset glow, it fills my eyes.

I stand at edge of sea and earth,

My bare feet washed in gentle surf.

Hiraeth's longing to call me on,

Here, on shore, in setting sun.

Hiraeth calls past sunset fire, 

"Look beyond, come far higher!" 

Some of us in the Diaspora were recently having an interesting discussion on social media about the Old Country and our hiraeth for it when Amanda Hector Muehlmann, another of my 'Demerara sugar cane-orphan’ friends, said some powerful words that sank right in to find a permanent place in my core that I can snuggle up to and feel warm when a burst of hiraeth announces itself on a cold, dark and wintery Polish day this coming winter.
“Speaking for myself,” she said. “Guyana is home and will always be home to me. When I say home, I mean home as in homeland. You can move away and adapt, but forgetting where you come from and who you are, is a loss of identity, it makes you a nobody.” She paused then asked us. “ Do you know the song by Neil Diamond? ‘I am I said’? It goes,”:
‘Well, I'm New York City born and raised, 
But nowadays, I'm lost between two shores, 
LA's fine, But it ain't home, 
New York's home but it ain't mine no more’ “To put in my own words and explain what I said above,” Amanda went on. "Germany is home where I live and feel good, but it's not my homeland. Guyana is my homeland, but it ain't my home no more.”
Our own versions of what Amanda said would sound similar in the wide spread Guyanese Diaspora. My version of Amanda’s wise observation is: Poland is home where I live and feel good, but it's not my homeland. Guyana and the county of Demerara is my homeland, but my ‘Demerara’ has moved on and ‘it ain't mine no more’. My hiraeth is for the Old Country and sometimes I'm lost between two shores just like Neil Diamond. One of them is a tropical country of vast Amazon jungle, vast savannahs, mighty rivers, mountains and fertile plains in South America and the other, the more important one of my adulthood is Poland, a temperate country of beautiful rivers, mountains and plains far away in the heart of Europe.

The Mango Tree by  Hugh Allan Yearwood, 2011. Bumbury Ameriandian Settlement, Mabaruma, Guyana