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Études et essais

“I Went Back to my Old School”

Nostalgia, Migration and Return in Africa
« Je suis retourné-e dans mon ancienne école. » Nostalgie, migration et retour en Afrique.
Sabine Marschall
p. 302-322

Résumés

En examinant un cas d’étude de migrants africains qualifiés en Afrique du Sud, cet article porte sur une région géographique négligée au sein de la recherche internationale sur la migration. Contextualisée par rapport aux recherches plus larges sur l’expérience personnelle des migrants, l’étude actuelle se concentre sur le rôle de la mémoire personnelle et sociale en tant que vecteur négligé de l’expérience migratoire. D’autres études sur les migrants ont déjà exploré la mémoire en lien avec des tentatives de préserver l’identité culturelle ou de maintenir l’ambiance du foyer d’origine dans le pays hôte, mais cet article attire l’attention plutôt sur la mémoire dans le contexte du pays natal où le déclenchement de souvenirs s’effectue en fonction d’une performativité spécifique lors de visites de courte durée chez soi. La plupart des migrants de retour au pays passent du temps non seulement en famille mais aussi en se rendant dans des lieux significatifs, notamment — comme nous l’avons trouvé dans cette recherche — leurs anciennes écoles qui sont associées à la fois aux souvenirs d’enfance et au passé pré-migratoire. Basée sur des entretiens avec 40 participants de différents pays africains, cette recherche s’enrichit de concepts théoriques de la discipline des études de mémoire (Memory Studies), en particulier en ce qui concerne le lien entre mémoire et lieu. Pourquoi les migrants retournent-ils à leur ancienne école ? Comment la visite déclenche-t-elle des souvenirs qui affectent l’identité, l’amour-propre ou le sens de soi-même ? Cette étude a révélé que l’engagement multi-sensoriel avec l’environnement matériel et social de l’école, un microcosme de leur « monde chez soi » (« homeworld »), associé avec des souvenirs profondément ancrés, est vécu de manière affirmative et constructive (empowering) pour les migrants en répondant à des besoins psychologiques et en contribuant à un sentiment de continuité de leur identité face aux changements et défis liés à la migration.

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1One important strand within the scholarly literature on migration, especially from a social science and anthropological perspective, focuses on the personal life experiences of migrants and displaced people, their challenges of adaptation to the host country environment and emotional responses to the experience of alienation, isolation and longing for return (Safran 1991; Fortier 2000; Long & Oxfeld 2004; Stock 2010). Memory plays an important and still under-researched aspect in the field of migration. A growing body of empirical studies explores how migrants foster nostalgia, maintain cultural identity and create a sense of home in their new environment through food, music, clothing, objects, or routine home-making practices (Tolia-Kelly 2004; Hage 2010; Kleist & Glynn 2012; Hung, Xiao & Yang 2013; Roberts 2018). While such studies explore the role of personal and social memory in relation to the hostland context, this paper draws attention to memory in the homeland context, i.e. the activation of memories through specific performativity during temporary return visits to the home country.

2By exploring a case study of skilled African migrants or transnationals in South Africa, the paper contributes new knowledge to intra-continental African migration, a neglected geographical focus area within the field of migration studies. This paper is part of a larger qualitative research project that investigates the role of memory in travel and migration, especially its impact on identity construction. It was previously found that temporary return journeys home induce reflection and remembrance, new insights and comparisons between home and host country that can result in significant shifts in a migrant’s sense of belonging and identity (Marschall 2017a). While migrants on home visits tend to spend much of their time with family and friends, most also return to significant places associated with memories of their childhood or pre-migration past.

3This paper focuses on one such place, the former school, because this was by far the most frequently mentioned response and common denominator among participants from many different countries and diverse migration profiles. The aim of this paper is to delve more deeply into the link between memory, place and identity by examining how migrants engage with the material spaces, social relations and multisensory stimuli of their familiar former school grounds, a place charged with emotional memories and recognized as formative in one’s life trajectory. While many people might find a return to their former school and similar significant places associated with their past interesting or gratifying, it is argued here that such memory-based visits are more significant in the specific context of migration, because memories attached to and stimulated by this meaningful place become a mediator between what Donohoe (2014) calls “homeworld” and “alienworld.” It is argued here that the “nostalgic reverie” (Sedikides et al. 2008) fostered by the bodily engagement with this highly charged environment can satisfy deeply seated psychological needs and contribute to a sense of identity continuity in the face of migration-related change and challenges. This paper draws on theoretical frames and concepts from the field of Memory Studies, especially scholarship on the reconstructive nature of remembering, the tendency to sanitise the past and the link between memory and place to enhance our understanding of migrants’ subjective experience of place and sense of identity and belonging.

Migration and Return

4In the fast growing niche area of the tourism-migration nexus, much has been published about diasporic tourism, migrant return travel and the temporary home visits of migrants in different geographical contexts, although rarely on the African continent. Migrants embark on home trips for a variety of reasons, most especially visiting family; attending important social events; looking after property and other material interests; and generally immersing themselves in their “homeworld,” the familiar geographic and socio-cultural environment of home and identity (Feng & Page 2000; Duval 2003, 2004; Coles & Timothy 2004; Marschall 2017a).

5Another strand of scholarship relevant to this paper pertains to the significance of re-visiting places associated with personal memories (Marschall 2012; Pearce 2012), although this has rarely been connected to the literature on migration. People retrace their own footsteps because they have a long-standing connection with certain locales, a deep sense of entanglement with the place and its social relations. In the first instance, the return to such meaningful places is a sensory experience which triggers basic emotional responses, states Pearce (2012), drawing on affective neuroscience. Psychologists confirm that returning to one’s old university, for instance, and reflecting on one’s personal history can enhance personal functioning and control (Pearce 2012: 1029, citing Fischer et al. 2011). Research among African migrants in South Africa suggests that even individuals who struggle financially, sometimes manage to embark on temporary return journeys to their home country (Marschall 2017b). During their sojourn, some coincidentally return to or deliberately set out to revisit certain familiar places of education, leisure and recreation, family life or momentous events that have shaped their life-course and identity while growing up in the home country, most often their former school or university.

6In many African countries and especially at the micro-level of the local community and family, going to school and receiving a quality education cannot be taken for granted. In comparison with the developed world, but also many countries in the developing world, the educational level and even basic literacy still rank low for African societies. Access to tertiary level institutions and especially higher degree studies is very restricted, prompting the educated elite to upgrade their educational qualifications in South Africa. Skilled professionals migrate there to pursue professional opportunities, while the uneducated are lured by the prospect of finding a job in a more vibrant and advanced economy. South Africa has hence become one of the continent’s most important migration hubs since the advent of the democratic era in the mid 1990s. The country attracts a range of mobile Africans, including refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, and so-called elite migrants (highly skilled professionals and foreign students), mostly from the Southern African Development Community (sadc) and West Africa, notably Nigeria (Crush & McDonald 2002; Adjai & Lazaridis 2013; Kihato 2013; Meny-Gibert & Chiumia 2016; Stupart 2016). It must be noted that the boundaries between established categories such as refugees and foreign students, asylum seekers and skilled migrants can be quite fluid in South Africa. Refugees might enrol for phd programmes at the university and highly skilled migrants can be found eking out a living as informal traders, at least temporarily, because their professional qualifications are not recognized in South Africa. Many migrants initially assert their firm desire to return home in a few years, but gradual adaptation to the host country environment and dependence on the opportunities it offers often results in the deferral of the return, sometimes indefinitely.

Memory and Place

7Jane Donohoe (2014) draws attention to memory and the phenomenological experience, the bodily engagement with places and the material world. She maintains that for migrants who have lived in another country for a long period of time, who are well integrated in the local society and relate to it as “home,” the “alienworld” is gradually transformed into “homeworld,” but this process can never be complete. Like a palimpsest, the homeworld can be written over by the alienworld, but the former is so fundamental to the embodied nature of our existence, our perception and ways of knowing that traces of earlier writings will always show through (ibid.: 18-20). Because of the phenomenological lived experience of that place and bodily interaction with it, revisiting the former school, one of the most significant and formative places of the homeworld, makes these traces more visible. It brings memories to the fore that induce reflection about the past and the present, introspection about roots and belonging and, in the process, influence the internal process of constructing the story of one’s life.

8Gaston Bachelard (1964) in The Poetics of Space emphasizes the subjectivity of place(s) grounded in the childhood home. The memory of the childhood home provides the foundation, the formative benchmark or norm that frames the experience of any other place from then on. Jane Donohoe (2014) extends this notion to other highly familiar, habituated places, including the elementary school, where one spent much time during childhood and youth. As adults we can recall many details of such places, but these memories become truly animated only when we physically return there. Stepping back into locales that are either very familiar or significant for a singular momentous event in one’s life “creates a rush of memories that only return due to the sense of the place, the smell, the feel of the air, and the very place itself” (Donohoe 2014: xiv). “Places inform a kind of body memory that can be reawakened” (ibid.: 3), because memory is not only attached to place or “implaced,” but also embodied, i.e. tied up with bodily movement, comportment, the development of habit and bodily sensory responses. Arguing for a “mnemonics of the body,” Paul Connerton (1989), in this seminal book on social memory, had already highlighted how memory is not only “inscribed” (i.e. stored in written records), but “incorporated” in bodily practices through performativity and repetition.

9Episodic and autobiographical memory is not simple recall of stored information, but an imaginative act of (re)constructing the past in the context of the present. This active process is selective, purposeful and influenced by many factors, including mediated sources, situational and contextual demands (Schacter 1996; Freeman 2010; Rose 2010; Sutton, Harris & Barnier 2010). The insight of these scholars that remembering is also shaped by personal and social motivation and “self-identity goals” points to the future orientation of memory. In an African context, various scholars in Diawara, Lategan and Rüsen’s (2010) collection explore the future potential of memory, the concept of remembering with the future in mind, remembering as a teleological process—both at the individual and societal level. The memory of the past is often a traumatic one, associated with violence, suffering, poverty or hardship, which is then reconfigured to allow for the possibility of an alternative envisaged future. J. Bisanswa’s (2010: 83) notion of the “memory of crossing,” the crossing being “not a return to the past but a detour through the past towards the future,” is relevant to the migrant’s return visit to the school. The literal tour of the school activates memories of the past, but these recollections are reconstructed from the perspective of the present, which in turn is intricately connected with an envisaged future. This is especially true for phd candidates and those enrolled in temporary educational programmes, but generally for all those who have migrated, because the migration experience—often undertaken at great personal sacrifice—is viewed as a launching pad into a brighter future.

10At this point we have to consider another important insight of scholarly research on memory, one that has epistemological and methodological consequences, namely that remembering, and especially the sharing of memories, is also influenced by the presence of an audience. Oral historians have long been aware how the researcher as audience impacts on the reconstruction and sharing of the participant’s memories. Questions about what is allowed and not allowed in reciting the past and to whom, as well as perceptions about the purpose and trustworthiness of the interviewer are very significant in an African context. Oral history research in South Africa, “a wounded country” (Denis & Ntsimane 2008), is deeply impacted by factors of race, ethnicity, gender and age (the researcher being a white, middle-aged female) and the interviewer must constantly be aware that memories are not objects to be discovered, but constructed and created through inter-subjective dialogue (Field 2008; Wells 2008).

11Interviewing someone about their past experience and life story is a form of oral history research, but the point of the current study was not to establish what really happened in the migrant’s past; rather it was about how interviewees reconstruct their autobiographical past. The childhood past at the school is remembered and reconstructed during the site visit, as place-bound memories are activated; these memories are subsequently recalled, filtered and reconstructed over again during the course of the interview. This occurs with the researcher as audience in mind and, importantly, from a new vantage point, a subject position marked by temporal and spatial distance and tied to an envisaged future.

Methodology

12Data for this paper were obtained in two phases over a period of three and a half years (2014-2018). A total of 40 participants were interviewed, of which 30 were highly educated and associated with academia (academic staff, phd candidates, post-doctoral candidates) based at two institutions of higher learning in Durban. Ten participants were drawn from outside academia, comprising both skilled and unskilled migrants working in formal employment or as informal traders in Durban. In the first phase, snowball and purposive sampling were used to ensure diversity in terms of gender, age, occupation, and country of origin. Participant selection for the second phase, which was exclusively focused on phd candidates, started out with random sampling from a comprehensive institutional database and was then supplemented with purposive sampling to balance demographic characteristics. All interviews were conducted in English face-to-face (two via Skype video call); interview data were subsequently transcribed and analysed thematically.

13As with similar kinds of qualitative research based on a small sample, the total number of responses within each thematic area might be just two or three, but the point of such research is to explore the rich diversity of experiences and discover deeper underlying patterns that would not become evident in questionnaire surveys with large populations. However, due to the limitations of the sample size and case study approach, the results of this research are not necessarily generalizable.

Findings and Discussion

14About half of all participants had returned to their old primary school or high school; several more had revisited their former university or college; a few had not revisited, but expressed a strong desire to do so. About 10% indicated that they had not been back to any former school and did not seem to be interested in doing so. The initial assumption of this research was that migrants with higher levels of education would be more likely to value a visit to their former school. While this might still hold true, the research found that many of the informal traders and people with lower levels of education had also revisited their respective schools. However, in terms of the results presented below, it must be remembered that the sample was heavily biased towards the highly skilled or elite migrants.

Nostalgia, Social Relations and Reconnecting with the Homeworld

15Of those who had revisited their school, a few did so for primarily pragmatic reasons or largely coincidentally, for instance, because they needed a document or they accompanied a young family member who now attends the same school. Some participants indicated that they wanted to visit friends and teachers. This response was especially common among those who returned to their former university or to a school where they still had close connections (e.g. one person had also worked at the same school), but surprisingly, a few respondents even went back to their primary school to call on former teachers. While the initial primary motivation for the return visit might have been reconnecting with meaningful social relations, responses indicate that once there, the encounter of the familiar social and built environment brought many memories to the fore, prompted them to linger or embark on a wider exploration of the spaces.

16All participants described these returns to their former school as positive, gratifying experiences, bringing back happy memories and often a sense of appreciation and gratefulness, sometimes motivating them to work hard or “give back.” Not a single respondent mentioned any anxiety about tests and exams, punishment for wrongdoings, experiences of bullying or any other unpleasant dimensions of their schooldays, which can be assumed to be part of every pupil’s school experience. Respondents were not specifically asked about negative aspects to avoid influencing their chosen reconstruction of the past. Scholars are well aware that apart from deeply traumatic incidents that leave a life-long impression, many individuals tend to reconstruct their childhood in a sanitized and often nostalgic manner, because memories tend to improve over time and happy experiences and impressions are generally remembered better.

17Unsurprisingly, a few participants reported being amazed how much smaller the built environment looked today and a few others reported indulging in specific episodic childhood memories that took place at the school. Two participants mentioned showing their children their former school and one took a friend from South Africa, explaining that this was part of a quest to introduce the friend to his personal history. Clearly most interviewees had a sense that the places and relationships associated with the school were deeply entangled with their personal biography. This was arguably enhanced through their migration experience and most especially their current pursuit of higher degrees or employment opportunities, stepping-stones into a positively imagined future.

18Migrants are exposed to many emotional dynamics in the host country, from loneliness, homesickness, alienation, on the one hand, to satisfaction, gratification or excitement over educational, occupational and other host-country based opportunities, on the other. Any temporary home visit induces comparisons between home and host country, the past and the present, and results in a re-evaluation of home, identity and belonging. Many migrants savour the immersion in the homeworld and feel the deep ties that bind them to their place of origin, while others begin to realize how much they have become attached to the host country and how their migration has rendered their relationship with home complex and contradictory (Marschall 2017b).

19When migrants deliberately set out to return to significant places and especially their former school during their temporary home visits, the move could be described as an attempt to reconnect to the homeworld with its meaningful places and associated social relations. Here they hope to find temporary relief from the alienation and emotional turmoil experienced in the host country, especially perhaps when they are still new to the alienworld.

You know there are so many things I missed. I missed my friends, I missed things […] just to see the image, I wanted to see […] and then I went to my old school because my old school… I just wanted to see the place, and meet my friends, my colleagues from school […] (Female lecturer from Kenya).

20Donohoe (2014: 7) alerts us to the close connection between the memory of places and social relations, because friends, family and colleagues are usually tied to particular places that we inhabited with them. It is for this reason that we sometimes return to specific locations in order to remember people who may have moved on or passed away. As early as the 1920s, Maurice Halbwachs (1992 [1925]), in his pioneering and influential work on the social frames of memory showed how individual memory is inconceivable from collective frames of reference or social frames of memory. The entanglement of personal with collective memories or the memories of specific groups of others is particularly evident in the context of the school—a confined space—where a limited number of individuals spent many years together. Most of these individuals are no longer there, but the tangible and intangible physical characteristics of the school have barely changed and the place still holds the memory of them and precipitates memories of shared experiences deeply connected to one’s sense of self.

Paying homage

21Some participants did not find anyone they knew at the school or they visited without the intention of meeting friends and teachers. Some went back without any apparent reason or they could not explain their motivation. When asked why they returned to their school, they often laughed or chuckled during the interview, some of them stumbling a bit or struggling to find the right words to explain.

I went to my high school, I went to… just to visit, just to connect […]. I did not meet anybody I know because […] it’s being a long time since I left the school. But it was just to see that place and say ok, this… especially my high school, because […] I believe that my high school very much contributed […]. My high school was built by a Canadian and it was one of the reference schools in my area and I believe that the education that I got in my high school […] helped me a lot (Male post-doctoral fellow from Cameroon).

The primary school, for me it brings back profound memories. That is where I did my primary education, from grade 1-3 and my mom taught me during those grades. I just wanted to go there and maybe pay homage, because it gives me an idea of where I came from (Male PhD candidate from Zimbabwe).

22Many respondents expressed similar motivations, amalgamating the desire to reconnect and pay tribute, while clearly indulging in pleasurable reminiscence. Given that most participants in the sample were skilled professionals or candidates enrolled for higher degrees, the return visit to their home country and mingling with social relations there enhanced these migrants’ awareness of their exceptional status and belonging to a small elite. This was compounded by admiration and respect received from proud family members and friends who celebrated their visit and achievements. In this context, the return to the former school is motivated by a deep sense of gratitude towards the teachers and the efforts they made, as well as by an appreciation for the institution’s foundational contribution to one’s education, personal and professional development.

Yes, I did revisit, especially, my secondary school. Why did I revisit the school? First of all, I identified that that was the beginning of my journey to higher heights and it is a kind of recognition, a symbolic recognition of the effort that the teachers at the school made to me to be where I was presently. I went there also to see the development that had taken place after I had left the institution. In fact, I saw some developments like new buildings and old buildings that had been reworked. I went to one of the classrooms and I remembered; I said “this is where I used to sit. This is where I used to sit” (Female lecturer from Cameroon).

23The visit of the school induces reflection and introspection about one’s autobiographical history and life path. Solid educational foundations were laid here, despite hardships and shortcoming; meaningful social relations were forged and many mundane and formative events were experienced here. Placing these memories into the context of the present, there is a realisation that it all began here, that this unique piece of ground with its buildings, multifarious spaces and people is authentically bonded with one’s life, ultimately the springboard for one’s migration to South Africa. More precisely, as indicated earlier, it is not that memories of the past are recalled and then evaluated against the present, but the process of remembering itself is motivated and shaped by the psychological needs, the social and situational demands of the present. One of the most important motivations to remember is the desire to consolidate one’s own sense of self and the decision to return to the school, to linger there and explore is a manifestation of an internal need for such consolidation.

Boosting Self-esteem and Inspiring Others

24Where participants met former teachers or introduced themselves to the current principal, the staff were reportedly delighted to hear of their alumni’s success. In a few cases, respondents used the occasion to address current students, trying to inspire them and encourage them to work hard. This situation does not entail silent contemplation of memories and reflection, but the sharing of memories in a semi-public forum tied to a particular purpose.

I think I have only been to my old school […] my primary school basically, and I think to me… the kind of school that I came from […] to me it felt like a big achievement […] so, I mean, having come from such environment, I feel like I have made a great breakthrough when I found myself in Cape Town. I remember I was there […] I went and visited there to encourage the students there to work hard. Out of my area, I think I was the first person, me and my group were actually the first persons to go to the university; the rest of the people just went to join the army or police. So… I felt happy about it because I would motivate […] young people from the village and after that, most of them are now enrolled in the university. And I also helped during winters where I would help people with physics, maths and chemistry. Most of them really appreciated my efforts […] I still do. Sometimes I am there […] just to interact with them. You know what, work hard, listen to your teachers, don’t just be rebellious. I still do (Male PhD candidate from Lesotho).

Yes, I did. I always visit my high school and my primary school to speak to them, encouraging them. The first time I visited my high school, my teachers will always want me to go around the classes to encourage the students, talk to them about what education is in South Africa; what they can do to become an engineer. I felt pity when I visited my Alma mater after I came back from SA the first time, because of the situation of things ranging from the buildings […] dilapidated classrooms that are not renovated after a storm took off the roofs in my primary school. I always donate to the school sometimes even when I don’t have enough. I had to go to the classroom where I sat then; the student I met sitting there, I told him he must be intelligent as I am because I left a blessing there on the seat. I reflect on my life when I visit these places; none of us knows tomorrow and where we would be in the future. If some people had known where the other would be, probably they would respect us more and others would probably even have killed one because of jealousy (Male PhD candidate from DRC).

25These statements illustrate the strong performance element and the significance of audience in the process of remembering. In the course of inspiring and admonishing the school children, the alumni will invariably share selected memories of their own time at the school and narrate relevant details from their autobiography constructed towards the expectations of the audience and the purpose of the talk. The alumnus is a hero for the local children, dispensing valuable advice, even blessings and helping out with educational and material support. Without wanting to diminish in any way the contribution, commitment and sense of responsibility of these participants, the statement also suggests that this type of memory-based engagement fosters their own self-esteem and internal sense of pride. The morally elevated impulse “to give back” and help the children is underpinned by reflection on one’s extraordinary life path, achievements and exceptionality, which is far more blatantly evident in this specific context, than in their normal host country environment surrounded by peers.

[…] as I told you I was born in that village. I’m the only guy… I’m the only guy that came from that elementary school, now reaching, doing PhD. I’m the only guy, so I have to go and […] initiate the students to be strong, to do the university and other tests. And also I have plans to organise some funds for the maintenance of the school and other things; I’m also thinking of that one. That’s my plan (Male PhD candidate from Ethiopia).

26African migrant students or candidates for higher degrees often perform above average in the host country academic environment; African migrant professionals are valued in the employment sector, because these individuals are not only highly qualified, but their migration-related life experience has instilled in them a cosmopolitan mind set, an attitude of hard work and an ability to cope with change. The data collected in this research testify to the challenges, marginalization and disadvantages that many of these migrants faced during their school-going years. One candidate, for instance, mentioned four different classes in a single room in his elementary school in Lesotho, yet he is now enrolled for a phd in South Africa. Interestingly, none of the respondents dwelled on such adversities during the interview, but the emphasis was always on the happy memories, the deep appreciation for the school and the teachers, and some implicit recognition that their upbringing and schooling experience ultimately prepared them to cope with the privations associated with migration. Sedikides et al. (2008) observed that more often than not, nostalgic accounts follow a redemption sequence, i.e. the narrator progresses from a disadvantaged to a victorious position, resulting in positive feelings and boosting self-esteem. The visit to the school and especially interactions with teachers and current students provides the occasion and context for such nostalgia.

27Another person who expressed a strong desire to go back to their former schools, but has not yet done so, explains: “I would want to go there just to inspire the students there, just to show them that I was once a scholar there just like them, but now I have achieved so much” (Female phd candidate from Zimbabwe). For the audience—the students and the teacher—this kind of planned and performed reminiscence is associated with a specific purpose, e.g. educational and personal developmental outcomes. For the migrant participant it might be experienced to some extent as a celebration of the self, but also a rooting of one’s identity and consolidation of multiple and contradicting selves that may stand in tense relationship to one another in the alien world of the host country. Freeman (2010) explains that the specific context of our remembering, its motivation and purpose, the audience with whom we share our memories and the social interactions we have with listeners are all factors that influence the way we remember and narrate our own past. Memories are malleable and on each occasion, autobiographical and episodic memories are recalled with slight variation, depending on these contextual factors. Ultimately, we tend to shape our memories in accordance with particular “self-identity goals” or preferred ways of identifying ourselves (Schacter 1996; Freeman 2010; Rose 2010; Sutton et al. 2010).

Nostalgic Reverie

28Beyond the familiar elements of paying tribute, reconnecting and reflecting on the formative role of the school, the following exchange illustrates how the return visit to the school can take on a dynamic of its own. The respondent was clearly not satisfied with a casual walk-about, talking with teachers and examining changes, but felt the need to explore, linger and reflect; to walk in her former footsteps and seek a deeper, more intense engagement with memories attached to the place.

Q: Why did you go back to the high school?
A: Because I wanted to re-visit, because I feel like that place prepared me for coming to South Africa. So, I just wanted to go back there and see my schoolteachers and just thank them because I feel like that whole thing just make me strong.
Q: Was it mostly about seeing your teachers and speaking to them again or something about the place itself, wanting to see the buildings again and the whole environment?
A: It was everything because I just didn’t see the teachers alone; I went back to the dorm I was staying, the room I was staying and I also went to see my little sisters. So, it was just like… I used to sleep on this bed [...] I felt like I had to re-visit that area to really see like where I have come from and what the goal is. Because I had to re-visit that place to remind myself why I am where I am […] and where it all started because that place, it really made this present, as much as they did everything for us to equip us for the real world. It was just like this place […] (Female PhD candidate from Zimbabwe).

29This response illustrates how the return to the school is not only about appreciation and nostalgic contemplation of the past, but how the place-based reminiscence is relevant for an understanding of the present and provides direction for the future (to see “what the goal is”). Here we see the notion of remembering with the future in mind (Diawara, Lategan & Rüsen 2010). Moreover, recent scholarship on nostalgic memory has challenged nostalgia’s common association with sentimentalism, melancholy, futile longing and conservatism, arguing that nostalgia can also be “productive,” i.e. enabling, progressive, and future-oriented (Sedikides et al. 2008; Bonnett & Alexander 2013; Smith & Campbell 2017). Sedikedes et al. (2008) propose that “nostalgic reverie” can promote a sense of self-continuity that is very advantageous for psychological health and well-being, bolstering a continuous sense of positive meaning in the present.

30The desire to indulge in nostalgic reverie prompted a few participants to seek a deeper, more active, physical or visceral experience of the place. This included not only looking for specific spots, one’s former bed in the dorm or one’s former seat in the classroom, but actually sitting down on that seat. Rather than mere visual contemplation, they desired a multisensory bodily experience, wanting to feel and touch that very bench.

A: Yah, my former school, I have visited my former schools, my primary school because every time […] I have to go into the school and see around how it is and […] I check my class, I check my position where I used to sit.
Q: Have you ever sat in the same bench you sat back in your school days?
A: Yes, I have. The feeling is so nice and the problem is, it has really modified, it has really changed from how it used to be, but the structure remains the same; even the positions and the sitting arrangements remain the same […]
Q: What do you feel when you go to these places? Do you reflect about your life?
A: Yes, in fact, there was a day I sat there and really felt like […] I looked at myself when I used to sit there and I looked at myself where I am [now]. When I used to sit there, I never imagined that I would be where I am currently. And when I sit there, I can picture all my teachers, how they were teaching us. I can vividly remember and all their names and everything. I suppose when I don’t visit, I may forget the names of the teachers, but when you are there, you actually picture how it used to be. Actually, I appreciate [it] a lot because when you look at yourself, when you are there where you are… it becomes very… (Male PhD candidate from Kenya).

31The act of sitting on that bench, the touch and feel of it, activates social memory deeply engrained through bodily automatisms, habitual activities and performativity (Connerton 1989), but it is also the visual perspective of the room from this familiar spot that precipitates memories. It brings the past into the present to the extent that the participant begins to remember all the names of the teachers and in fact, the respondent feels that he might otherwise forget these names. The revisit of the school and the physical engagement with its material world is hence a kind of memory work that connects the past with the present. Donohoe (2014: 20-21) raises the pertinent question: “If memory is so intimately tied to body and place, then how is it that we can forget?” Her answer suggests that much of what we perceive to have forgotten is in reality only buried. We realize this when glimmers or even floods of memory unexpectedly return upon encountering particular places, things or multisensory prompts, such as a smell, taste or song.

32The data presented so far overwhelmingly affirm the positive emotions and deep sense of identification associated with the return to the school, but a few respondents also included a note of sadness, melancholy or alienation. One participant was depressed about the dilapidated state of the school buildings. Another one first stated that she goes back to her old primary school because it makes her happy, but later added that she feels sad when she remembers the lost friends that she used to spend much time with in this foundational place (“we are no longer talking”). Another interviewee said:

Yes, I did [sit on the same bench]. I sat in that same space and said “I remember I used to sit here.” So it was exciting and then you go again and those are not your classmates. Your classmates have left and it is not really a familiar environment apart from the fact that they have records of you saying “okay, xyz was here; was part of this school from this year to that year.” So, I introduced myself to this principal and I said I just want to go around and reconnect (Female lecturer from Cameroon).

33These responses speak of a sense of loss and affirm once again the importance of social relations, the close connection between place and—classmates, friends, teachers—a community. One can revisit the grounds, the buildings, the material environment of the school, indulge in happy memories and appreciate this micro-world as a launching pad for one’s personal development, career and migration trajectory. But one cannot revisit the social component that once inhabited and animated this constituent part of the homeworld, the people with whom one’s personal memories are intertwined. One can return to the place of one’s memories of the past, but not to the past itself.

34The place where one grows up and the specific locations in which one spends much time, notably the school, form a decisive part of one’s biographical identity, resulting in lasting affinities and emotional attachments. The experience of migration, displacement and employment-related mobility arguably pronounces such sentiments, because the confrontation of the alienating world of the host country induces comparison and nostalgic longing; it changes people’s connections to places and creates challenges to their identity (Pearce 2012). Just as the temporary home journey, especially the very first visit, makes migrants aware of homeland characteristics that had previously been taken for granted or gone unnoticed, the return to the school induces a new consciousness and recognition that the school was formative in more than just educational terms. The visual and visceral, bodily confrontation with the material and immaterial environment of the familiar school grounds help the migrant realize that this is a place that embodies and implaces memories deeply connected to childhood, upbringing, origins, and identity. Moreover, the visit supplies a flood of mnemonic triggers that stimulate recall and induce reminiscence about social interactions, distinguishing the school environment as forum for the early development of social relations.

35The data presented above have shown that all participants experienced the return visit to their former school very positively. This is not only due to the school being recognized as the root of their personal development and anchor of self-identity, but also because the migrants experience the gratification and enabling force of nostalgic reverie, its ability to boost self-esteem, motivation, and a sense of empowerment. These affirmative sentiments play a supportive role that help the migrants cope with the challenges and experience of isolation posed by their life in a foreign country; the microcosm of the school is the condensation point and metonym of the homeworld, which is rediscovered as a source of emotional strength and identity continuity. However, while the current study has clearly established the significance of such memory-based return visits and the gratification derived from them, it must be pointed out that these results are not generalizable. Not only do the usual limitations associated with qualitative case studies based on small samples apply to this research, but it must be acknowledged that an interest in nostalgia and retracing the steps of one’s life journey is always a matter of individual propensity or personal disposition, not even necessarily linked to upbringing or family-based memory culture. A successful sense of belonging is, in any event, not solely based on one’s own nurturing of nostalgic memory and home attachment, but also on the role of others—homeland and hostland residents, family members, life partners, etc.—and their approval, acceptance and support for inclusion in collective memories and notions of home (Stock 2010). This dimension, the entanglement of personal memories and different configurations of collective group memories, could be explored in further research.

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Sabine Marschall, « “I Went Back to my Old School” »Cahiers d’études africaines, 238 | 2020, 302-322.

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Sabine Marschall, « “I Went Back to my Old School” »Cahiers d’études africaines [En ligne], 238 | 2020, mis en ligne le 02 janvier 2023, consulté le 16 avril 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/30212 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesafricaines.30212

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Sabine Marschall

School of Social Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.

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