The return as ritual
Coming back to Sumba isn't just a matter of unpacking luggage or resetting an alarm. It is, in many ways, a ritual. A re-entry into space, into purpose, into the work of becoming, again.
Anthropologist Victor Turner once described rituals not just as ceremonies, but as thresholds, liminal spaces where identities shift, and meaning transforms. In coming back, I find myself in that liminal space: not quite who I was before I left, not yet who I will become. In the stillness of the early Sumba morning, this return feels less like resuming and more like reawakening.
My time away, both the delays and the quiet, the small frustrations and quiet revelations were not detours, but parts of the journey. If teaching is my rhythm, then pausing is its breath. I step back into the classroom not to repeat what I’ve done, but to deepen it.
Paulo Freire reminds us that teaching is never neutral. That even the smallest acts: listening, questioning, and waiting carry values too. So what does it mean to return to the same school, the same students, with a new set of questions?
Can I teach with more patience this time?
Can I listen with less urgency to respond, and more willingness to understand?
Can I invite my students not only to memorize, but to remember themselves as learners?
I’m beginning to believe that every return is a new curriculum. Not on paper, but in the heart.
So here I am, stepping across the threshold once again. Maybe with fewer answers. But with deeper attention. With a readiness to let this new beginning shape me.
What have your returns taught you?
