Go home - going home

Going home

The change of the year and the various festivities come with family gatherings for many of us. Going home for Christmas has been a recurring theme in our Argentinean-German family;  the ritual got some interesting impulses this season that I wanted to share with you.

Since Carolina and I got married 26 years ago our classical year end program consisted of a flight to Buenos Aires to meet the ‘circo Vidal’ (Carolina has three siblings). We would spend family time at the country or the beach house of my Argentinean in-laws.  Summertime, the great hospitality of my parents-in-law, the asados and long conversations in the shade of old trees would charactertize those trips.  For Carolina it was the annual home coming and for our girls it became a highly cherished experience of belonging to a Latina family.  Guillermo Vidal, the long-time partriarch and wonderful host (we called him Don Corleone for his Italien descent), passed away during COVID and since all siblings had moved out, three of them abroad, my mother-in-law, Teresa, reorganized the family’s real estate.  The country house was sold and the spacious appartment in Buenos Aires that had served as the family home for 25 years was changed for a more convenient simpler apartment along the River Plate.  This very reasonable decision implied that the traditional place for the annual family gathering had vanished. In the meantime, the Vidal family of 4 kids morphed to 4 married couples with a total of 11 kids of their own which came with the challenge of how and where to bring them all together.  Two years ago, Carolina organized a family gathering in Patagonia, this year we all met at a beach resort in Bahia, Brazil, at a place where Carolina and I got engaged 27 years ago. 

Where’s home?

The going home, hence, did not center around the family's physical space in Argentina but it was a family gathering in a hotel which allowed to spend time together, create the space where the cousins between 1 and 25 years old, could play and connect.  So, 21 people travelled from Argentina, Chile, Switzerland to meet in Bahia.  My logistics were a bit more complicated since I facilitated the last two workshops of the year for one of my clients in Boston.  Therefore, I booked a triangular flight from Europe to the US, then on to Salvador in Brazil to eventually come back from there to Europe.  Since I had some time between the end of the workshop and my flight departure I chose to visit Boston’s Museum of Fine Art.  As I was strolling without any particular direction through the musuem. I had some kind of an encounter with a painting from JMW Turner;  I have always been fascinted by his dramatic seas and skies.  This painting in addition to the seas and skies, showed some disturbing signs of people and chains in the foreground.  The painting is called ’The slave ship’ and was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1840. it was originally titled ’Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying’.  I spent quite a while in front of this painting, eventually took a picture and had the story of the drawning slaves working in my head.

Away from home

Between the various family activities in Bahia we one day chose to visit the nearby Castello Garcia d’Avila which is said to be the first Portuguese building in Brazil, established in the early 16th century.  In the museum I learned about the 4,5m African slaves that were brought to Brazil, half of them to Bahia to work on the Portuguese plantations for sugar cane, later tobacco and coffee as well as mining.  Brazil is the country that received the biggest portion of African slaves in the Americas.  And it was the last country to abolish slavery in 1888.   Ever since, black (preto) and mixed-race (pardo) have represented the majority of Brazilian population, over 55% at a recent census. They represent about 80% in Bahia and the Nordeste.  The African influence in music, culture, religion, food etc is notable and many proud Bahians consider Salvador the most important African city outside Africa. More food for thought on where is home and home coming.

The next morning as scrolling through the Guardian I am surprised to see JMW Turner’s painting again, combined with the recommendation of ’the book of the day’:  'The Zorg', by Siddarth Kara, 'a vivid and chilling account of the deadly voyage that triggered  the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade'.  I spent the next days’ early morning gym sessions listening to ’The Zorg’ via Audible; I was totally captivated by the two stories that the author was telling:

• The story of ’The Zorg’, originally a Dutch slave ship (Zorg means Sorge in German or care in English) which was captured on the coast of Africa by the British during the Anglo-Dutch war in 1781  (since the Dutch had supported the American territories with weapons and supplies, England declared war and Dutch ships as prizes for those capturing them).  In addition to the 200 slaves already captured by the Dutch crew the new English crew of The Zorg loaded  200 additional African slaves along the Gold Coast.  The Zorg sailed off from Accra to Jamaica in August 1781 with twice as many slaves that a typical slave ship would carry, with only 17 crew with mixed and probably limited marine experience.  It took them 4 months, twice the usual time; many slaves and some crew died on the way, many got sick and as they missed Jamaica (they took the island for Hispaniola and sailed further West) they ran out of water.  The officers decided to jettison 130 slaves over board to claim insurance money upon their return in Liverpool.  The insurance did not cover for dead slaves, but it did for an emergency at sea.
• The case made quite some waves back home in England, and inspired JMW Turner’s painting.  The first trial confirmed the slavers’ claim and the insurance was ordered to compensate the losses with 30 pounds per lost slave.  After the trial an anonymous letter in the Morning Chronicle pointed to several inconsistencies in the trial and criticized with remarkable details the horrors on slave ships.  The insurers requested a re-trial and apparently got support from abolitionist activists.  During the hearing lead by justice Lord Mansfield several of the inconsistencies were investigated; one being the actual amount of water available on board and the new fact that it was actually raining on the days when the slaves where jettisoned for lack of water.  The trial, the public interest and in particular the determination of a handful of individuals fighting for the abolition of slavery lead in 1807 to both houses of parliament prohibiting the Atlantic slave trade.  The Slavery Abolition act 1833 abolished slavery throught the British Empire. 

Go home

Which leads me to the an impulse of today’s political discussion.  Recently a lieutenant of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party told David Lammy, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary, ’to go home to the Caribbean’.  Lammy was born in London, studied law in London and Harvard and got elected as MP in 2000 representing Tottenham.  It is worth exploring this request from this Reform UK politician: where do you think home is for David Lammy who was born and lived his whole life in the UK?  And even if Lammy's parents came from Guyana would this be Lammy’s home?  And since the grand-parents of his grand-parents most probably had been enslaved by British slavers to work on the sugar cane plantations of their West Indies territories would that then mean that Lammy’s home is Africa?  It should not be up to a polarizing politician to determine where one’s home is, let alone call somebody to ‘go home’ to a place one has never lived.

Go home and going home.  It strikes me how different these very similar sentences sound and feel.  The latter is a wish to connect with your loved ones in your familar context; the former is an aggressive statement of othering, of telling somebody they do not belong here.

New home

On our last day in Bahia, we had the pleasure to be guided through the city of Salvador by Felix, a local guide.  He was born and raised in Salvador, he is a descendant of indigenous, black and white Brazilians and a very proud ambassador of his hometown.  He showed us the special places and invited us into his home.  We felt safe and welcome and humbled by his wisdom and deeply felt roots and identification.  The colorful picture of the world was painted by a Bahian street artist.

The next day our connecting flight from Madrid approached Zurich and I found myself pointing and naming the snowcapped mountains to a Mexican tourist from Guadalajara sitting next to me.  He was about to visit Switzerland with his family for the first time; it was their annual family gathering.  Even though I was not born in Switzerland, I felt happy to share my passion for the mountains with this foreigner and offering some tips on what they could be doing during their 9 day family trip through snowy Switzerland.  It felt a bit like coming home and sharing a piece of our home with others.

Your home

• Where is home for you?  How do space and people shape your concept of home?
• Has the concept of home changed during your life?
• How did you experience the creation of a new home?  How welcoming was the social context?
• Have you helped others find their homes?
• Have you ever been or felt homeless?
• Have you ever told somebody (or thought of telling somebody) to go home?  How do you feel about this today?
• What could you do this year to create spaces that feel like home?

Wishing you a 2026 of gathering, connection, listening to and learning from each other,

ekki

The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery