Written piece
The Museum
SUWILANJI NAMUSAMBA
Zambia
About this piece
The Museum, is what my siblings and I call my parent's house. It is a world of treasures containing echoes from our past, a place we go to replenish our souls and remember the dreams of the children we were when everything that home contains felt like our whole world.
Dancer, entrepreneur, swim instructor (we are in the pool at the time and I am helping her work on her diving). These are some of the guesses from my friend’s daughter to the question of what I do for a living. The disappointment on her face when I tell her I’m a lawyer makes me chuckle now, and I wonder what 10 year old me would think.
I’m sitting on the couch in my office looking at photos from the last 10 years. I remember the smell of my father’s study when I last visited: a world filled with books, old photo albums, archives of letters from boarding school dated from the 1990s to early 2000s telling mummy and daddy the mundane things about our weeks, tchotchkes from craft classes. When my dream job was being Vogue’s editor-in-chief and I would sketch outfits I designed for the spice girls. There are spiral notepads with scribbles: thoughtlets and skits I wrote.
This girl who dreamed.
As I scroll through my photo gallery now I see the dress I wore with a handbag strap as a belt. A ribbon from a discarded gift box which I weaved into my earrings to complete a look for a themed event. A scarf I turned into a top, because I didn’t have one that wouldn’t scratch my freshly tattooed back. My journal open next to a cup of coffee by a pool somewhere.
That little asthmatic girl who could barely be outside is exploring, hiking, adventuring, wandering the world. Touching plants, flowers, feeding elephants and giant tortoises, riding camels, snorkelling, paragliding, island-hopping, still sneezing sometimes and having to take antihistamines (because asthma turned to hay fever).
And sitting on my couch about to get back to my big girl responsibilities, I see that little girl smile.