Time: 0:02:05
But I don’t know where home is for me, yeah. Because Zimbabwe I can romanticize it and say, “That’s my soul home that’s where I want to return.” But I think, in just different interactions I’ve had with people who are either diaspora people as well whether from Zim or someplace else and they talk about their first journey back, home (gestures with hands), and realizing that, “Oh my gosh. It was nothing like that at all.” You know, to friends who, “I never want to go, I never want to return there,” or, “I want to visit but I realize I could never live there.” So, I guess when I realized that and not knowing what my first time, my first journey back to Zimbabwe what that’s going to look like and feel like it’s hard for me to say, “Yeah that is home.” And then with Colorado, for me I think, we always say, “Home is where the heart is.” But there is truth in that because I’m finding with Winnipeg I am starting to feel a sense of home but I’m finding it’s through people. And it’s through some of the friendships that I’ve made and, a number of those people won’t, Manitoba isn’t their forever, so I, I have been able to realize that I’m not attached to the land as with Colorado I’m attached to the land as much as I am to certain people but even in Colorado a lot of my very best friends don’t live there anymore they are spread out as well but I’m attached to, the land, I love just the mountains, you know. So it’s, I don’t know. I don’t know where I, I think, maybe that will all make sense or I’ll be able to find where Winnipeg how Winnipeg, where Winnipeg fits for me when I depart Winnipeg or, I decide to lay down roots and kind of flip in to a new chapter and then you can look back. Um-hm.
Nomaqhawe (Noma) Sibanda was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in 1981. Noma’s parents had been part of the freedom movement in Zimbabwe. The election of President Robert Mugabe made it too dangerous for them to stay in the country and the family moved to Denver, Colorado in 1985.
The Sibanda family did not have status in the United States despite being able to live, work and study in the country. The family was denied permanent residency after trying for many years because the United States determined that it was safe for them to return to Zimbabwe.
Noma’s parents and brothers immigrated to Steinbach, Manitoba as refugees in 2002, where her father found work as a history professor at the University of Winnipeg and her mother began working for a pharmaceutical company. Noma stayed in Colorado to finish her undergraduate degree. However, once she finished her degree she had to leave the United States.
Noma joined her family in Manitoba in October 2005, and found a job as a legal assistant in Winnipeg. Noma currently lives in Winnipeg and works in the fundraising sector.