Inside the Tribe with Tonyell: What Do We Actually Bring Home?

Greetings Tribe 💛✨  

We have spent three weeks going somewhere.

First came the invitation.

Then the crossing.

Then the discovery.

And now we have reached the part of travel that I think we sometimes rush past.

Coming home.

Except...

I'm beginning to think coming home isn't nearly as simple as getting back to the place you left.

Because you can unpack the suitcase.

Put the washing on.

Find somewhere for whatever you bought even though you absolutely did not need it. 😂

Go back to work.

Answer the emails.

Resume normal life.

And still be carrying the journey.

That's where Chapter Four begins.

The Return.

And the first question is deceptively simple:

What did they bring home?

The answer is not what fits inside their luggage.

Coming Back Isn't The Same As Returning

I love that distinction in this chapter.

Because Maya and Kai have physically returned to Leicester.

Tonya and Priscilla haven't.

They're still in Kenya.

The children are in Mombasa.

Elias and Zaire have spent the week holding things together in Leicester.

People are moving between Birmingham, Nairobi, Mombasa and Leicester, checking in on one another and carrying pieces of stories that began somewhere else.

So where exactly is the return?

That's the question.

Because I think when we're younger, home feels much easier to locate.

Home is an address.

A city.

A country.

The place everybody eventually comes back to.

But the bigger the Village becomes, the less useful that definition gets.

And I understand that personally.

New York is home.

Kenya is home.

Britain is home now too.

Those things don't cancel one another out.

They've become different pieces of the same life.

Maybe that's why one line underneath this chapter stayed with me:

The return doesn't necessarily happen when you land.

Sometimes it happens much later.

When something you experienced somewhere else suddenly appears in the way you live here.

The Things That Don't Go In The Suitcase

When we talk about bringing something home from a journey, we usually mean objects.

Souvenirs.

Photographs.

Clothes.

Something from the airport because you remembered at the last possible second that you promised somebody a gift. 😂

The book makes that joke too.

But then it moves somewhere more interesting.

Because people come home carrying things that never appear on a baggage allowance.

A sentence.

A telephone number.

A question.

A promise.

A friendship.

A different understanding of somewhere you thought you knew.

Sometimes even a different understanding of yourself.

And suddenly the question What did they bring home? becomes much bigger.

Maya went to Birmingham carrying fifteen years of avoidance.

She comes back carrying names.

People.

Memories.

And one photograph that has disturbed something she thought she understood about her mother's final day.

That's not a souvenir.

That's something she's going to have to live with.

Kai went with Maya because, let's be serious, there was never a version of that story where Kai was letting that woman walk back into Birmingham alone. 😂

But he comes back having built relationships with people who didn't exist in his life a few days earlier.

Because apparently Kai cannot cross a road without accidentally creating community.

And Priscilla?

She went back to Kenya carrying familiarity.

Then Nairobi reminded her that you can still belong somewhere while having to learn it again.

That one is going to stay with me.

Home Is Allowed To Keep Living Without You   

I think this might be one of the harder lessons in The Return.

Especially for those of us who have more than one place we call home.

We leave somewhere.

And part of us expects it to remain where we left it.

Same streets.

Same people.

Same language.

Same shortcuts.

Same little things that made us know:

I'm from here.

Then you return...

and somebody has built something where something else used to be.

The slang has changed.

The road has changed.

The people have changed.

The city knows people you don't.

And suddenly you're asking directions somewhere you once knew without thinking.

That doesn't necessarily mean you've stopped belonging.

Maybe it means home didn't stop living just because you left.

Priscilla has to confront exactly that in Nairobi. The chapter puts it beautifully: familiarity can fade without identity disappearing.

I think there's something freeing in that.

You don't have to prove you belong by knowing everything.

You don't have to pretend the place hasn't changed.

And you don't have to freeze yourself at the age you were when you left.

You can meet home again.

Sometimes What Comes Home Is Unfinished

This part matters.

Because stories have trained us to expect journeys to resolve things.

You leave.

Something happens.

You learn the lesson.

You return transformed.

Cue music. 😂

Except real life is rarely that tidy.

Maya doesn't come home with all the answers about her mother.

Priscilla doesn't suddenly understand every version of Nairobi she missed while living elsewhere.

And Kevin's story isn't neatly solved simply because the chapter needs somewhere to end.

There has been possible contact.

Police are involved.

Something has moved.

But moved isn't the same as resolved.

I appreciate that.

Because sometimes what we bring home is unfinished.

A photograph without a location.

A message without certainty.

A friendship that now has to survive geography.

A question nobody can answer yet.

And the book doesn't treat that as failure.

It says something I think we need to remember:

An unfinished return can still be an honest one.

We don't always get closure before the flight home.

Sometimes we just get the next thing we're supposed to carry.

The Village Didn't Return To One Place

This might be my favourite part of the whole idea.

Because by now, the Village is scattered.

And it still works.

That matters.

Twenty years ago, I think we might have imagined success as everybody eventually coming back together.

Back to Leicester.

Back around the same table.

Back into one room where we could look around and say:

Everybody's home.

But that's not what we've built.

And honestly?

I'm glad.

Because a Global Village shouldn't require everybody to be in the same place in order to remain connected.

The book puts it another way:

Home stops being the single point on the map where everybody gathers.

It becomes the thread that lets people separate without becoming disconnected.

That feels much closer to what I'm trying to build in real life.

Not one centre everybody has to keep returning to.

Connections.

Routes.

Relationships.

Places where somebody can arrive and know there is already a thread leading somewhere else.

Maybe that's what makes something global.

Not how far it reaches.

How well the connections survive the distance.

Around The Village

And I think this is a good week for us to be talking about return.

Because we're approaching that little seasonal shift ourselves.

Summer is beginning to give way to Autumn inside the Village.

Some of you have travelled with us through the Summer Season.

Some have been reading quietly.

Some have come to events.

Some have met people you didn't know when the season began.

Some of you may have joined thinking:

I'll try this and see what happens.

And now Autumn is opening.

I'm not going to give you a dramatic sales speech. 😂

You know whether the Village has become somewhere you want to keep showing up.

But I do want you to think about something before Summer disappears completely:

What are you carrying forward from it?

Maybe it's a friendship.

A place you discovered.

A story.

A conversation.

Maybe you finally went somewhere you kept saying you would visit.

Maybe you simply became a little more willing to walk into a room where you didn't already know everybody.

That counts too.

Because seasons don't only mark time.

Sometimes they show us what stayed.

And if the Village has become part of what you want to carry into Autumn...

make sure you come with us.

Before You Leave...

Chapter Four asks:

What did they bring home?

But I think there's another question underneath it.

When does a journey actually become part of your life?

Is it while you're there?

When you take the photograph?

When you board the flight home?

Or is it three months later when you cook something you first tasted there?

When somebody you met messages you on an ordinary Tuesday?

When you catch yourself doing something differently?

When your child knows the name of a place they've never visited because you've told the story so many times?

Maybe that's the real return.

Not coming back.

Carrying something forward.

So this week, before we ask where the Global Village goes next, we're going to sit with what came back from this journey.

Some of it beautiful.

Some of it uncomfortable.

Some of it unfinished.

Because perhaps that's what travelling with purpose actually means.

Not demanding that every journey change you.

But paying enough attention to notice when one has.

I'll meet you inside the Tribe Library.

Much love, 

Tonyell 💛✨ 

Founder, Tribe of Travelers

New Yorker by birth. 

Kenyan at heart. 

Living in Britain. 

Building the Global Village. 

📖 Continue Book Two

The Discovery asked us to pay attention to what another place was already carrying.

Now comes The Return.

Continue When the Village Carries Home with Chapter Four: The Return, beginning with Episode One: What Did They Bring Home? - as the Village discovers that returning isn't simply about getting back to where you started.

Sometimes the journey comes home as a photograph.

A question.

A friendship.

A different understanding of home.

And sometimes...

you don't realise what you've brought back until it begins changing what happens next.

👉🏾 Read Chapter Four (Tribe Membership required)

Chapter One is free inside the Tribe Library.

Haven't started Book Two yet? 

👉🏾 Start from Chapter One