I watched a debate recently about colonialism and reparations, specifically Arab colonialism in Africa. Combined with my recent brushes with the colonial history of Namibia, it got me thinking about the movement of people.

Did you know, for example, that the first inhabitants of Madagascar were probably Austronesians who sailed on canoes from South East Asia. The malagasy language apparently shares 90% of its basic vocabulary with the Ma’anyan language from southern Borneo.

Zanzibar fell, in 1698, to the Sultanate of Oman (who displaced the Portugese) and became an important part of the Omani empire, from which several areas of East Africa were controlled. In the 19th century, the then Sultan of Oman decided to make Zanzibar his permanent residence (capital?) and built lavish palaces and gardens there. For a while, Zanzibar was the capital of Oman.

The Andaman Islands between the Indian sub-continent and Thailand/Indonesia are populated in part by the Jarawa tribe who, it turns out (confirmed by DNA testing) are direct descendants of North Kenyan/South Ethiopian early man.

People have always travelled to and settled in new places. It is only in the last century, as our political correctness has shut down the option of conquest (at least for Western nations) and our population growth has driven us to claim whole countries of land as our own, for fear that we will be left with nowhere to go, that this kind of travel and movement has become less acceptable.

But I am still intrigued by nomadic groups, not because their lifestyle is somehow romantic and desirable – as modernity isolates them more and more, they often live in abject poverty – but because they are the antithesis of the sedentary lifestyles so many modern humans live. We have become strangely obsessed with a settled place. “Where are you from?”, “Where do you live?”, “What is your address?” But at least in socio-economically well-off circles, people’s lives exist largely on-line. Sending letters in the post is almost an anachronism but an address remain a crucial part of identity.

I have lived in Korea, I’ve lived in South Africa’s two biggest cities, I’ve lived in small university and farming towns. I’m currently in the Eastern Cape but the office I work for is in Cape Town. It is a little like the time I lived in Cape Town but my office and team were in Joburg. Or those crazy three months I commuted between Stutterheim and Pretoria. And I’d like to do it on a larger scale. I’d like to spend more time travelling across borders, particularly in Southern Africa. I want this whole region, rather than just one country, to become ‘home’.

In the back of my mind a whimsical idea is forming: what would it be like (and would it even be possible) to live without a fixed address for one year?