Home Again NKIROTE
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Home Again While ‘home’ often refers to a fixed address, it can also represent the familial/nostalgic space. Having been enrolled to boarding school when I was 12 and moved to Ithaca, New York after my enrollment into Cornell University at 19, my childhood home in Nairobi, Kenya is no longer quite the same place that I spent my youngest years in. A lot has changed. My father, ever the handyman has constructed numerous fixtures and additions to different parts of the house in a bid to preserve it. My mother, now retired and recovering from a two year-long mental health affliction, can no longer expend so much energy on baking, gardening, or other house projects that all breathed life to our home. My two older brothers moved out and now both have families of their own. My once intimate room is now a guest bedroom cum my nieces’ and nephews’ room whenever they visit their grandparents. Given that whenever I am in Kenya on holiday, I stay at an apartment elsewhere, living in my parents’ house is as strange as it is familiar. The spaces are at once impersonal and incredibly nostalgic. Because my parents stay at our countryside estate most of the time, a sense of abandonment looms in the air. Effects of water damage from floods, wear and tear of certain parts of the house over time and layers of dust from vacancy are all very visible. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, travel bans have been imposed and for the first time in years, I am once again home (alone) for an extended period, with minimal if any, physical time with my family. Propelled further by the uncertainty of the future brought about by a global crisis, “Home Again” attempts to explore and document the effects of time on my childhood home. The series figuratively mourns my lost home while celebrating our survival/triumph over all that we have faced. In many ways, it attempts to capture my connecting and reconnecting to my past, my childhood and my family in absentia during this unprecedented moment in time. HO M E
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Index 2 - 5Situating myself at home once again. 8 - 13Re-acquainting myself to the seemingly changed environment. 14 - 19 Re-connecting with friends and spaces that I once held dear. 20 - 27 Exploring and documenting the character of the exterior spaces. 28 - 29An ode to all the fixtures and additions that keep the house operational. 30 - 31 Re-familiarizing myself with the general neighbourhood. 32 - 33A celebration of my young, fierce feline companion. 34 - 35Finally settling in.
copyright 2020 @Nkirote Kirimi 36
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