MY OLD HOUSE
A sense of shelter vignette
by Ndahiro Bazimya

What do you know about my old house ? I know it was the house that I was born and raised in. A place that was filled with family, culture and tradition. A place where I came back to after the first day I started school, tired but optimistic of things to come. I know it was not a rich house, was a lower middle class home in an urban neighborhhood, but at the time, that didn't matter. I know that.

What do you see ? I see a small, but well kept one-story house surrounded by other homes in our neighborhood. Our home was across the street from the secondary school, Edward Kemble in Florin Road, Flores Way, South Sac. The first elementary school I went to. I see the faces of long lost friends knocking on the door, waiting impatiently for my brother and I to hurry up and get ready so we could explore the area and have fun. But time has made us drift apart, so I don't know these friends anymore, though I wish I did. That's what I see.

What do you hear ? I hear the sounds of my mom calling my name from inside the house, telling me it was six o'clock p.m. curfew, so I'd have to go inside and stop riding my bike. This, which I always did with reluctance since I loved being outside. I hear the sound of my voice arguing loudly with that of another boy's on the front sidewalk, his name I still remember. Jerald. An argument which first erupted when we group of kids were playing baseball in the street like we usually did all the time, an argument I now forget the reason of. That's what I hear.

What do you feel ? I feel the remembrance of calluses on my palms as I and my brother tried to build a tree house for the tree in our neighbor's yard, knee and elbow scrapes and bruises were common by now, however they weren't welcome to us. The tree house was a failure, but that wasn't important, it was just for the fun of it. I still feel the anger and sadness in my heart later, when my parents told me we would have to move. To say goodbye to all the friends and memories and my life as I knew it. To say goodbye to the old house. That's what I feel.

If the house's walls could talk… they would say that even though it has seen its own share of arguments, it has seen love too. It would talk about how I used to play Nintendo in the middle of the night, volume turned off, hoping I wouldn't get caught. It would talk about the sounds it heard, the arguments between me and anyone, the sounds of gunshots and helicopters at night, the sounds of rain hitting the roof in winter making it so that we couldn't play outside. If these walls could talk, they would relate all these isolated incidents and through that showing a group of people, their personality, individuality, and history. Through that you could see why my old house means so much to me.

So what is your sense of shelter ? My former house : my memories, my past, everything that I was. This is my sense of shelter.

Ndahiro BAZIMYA