What do you call someone who grew up away from home? Someone who is both an outsider at home and an outsider when they are away from home. What do you call someone who has to adapt, adjust, and conform? Someone who returns home to search for their roots. Roots that are buried deep under the termite mounds, beneath the huts and trees. Roots that quickly disintegrate if brought haphazardly to the surface. A Mbwiti is an Aawambo person whose ancestral homeland is in the central-north region of Namibia but who has lost touch with it due to migration. Some Mbwitis have lost touch with their language, customs, and culture, while others have retained aspects of them. Their identity and culture are shaped both by where they come from and the place that they currently call home.

Mbwiti is a personal reflection, a remembering, a rehoming and a renaming of what was, recognizing that the past cannot return in the same way, but in honoring it, the work makes way for a new identity to evolve.