Pathways

I’m not a saint but I know I try to be kind, I was raised by a woman, my nanny, Hazel Conway, who loved people, most importantly children, she took in so many kids and no matter colour, religion, background, she nourished them and gave them love. She found passion in treating the young with respect. 

I learned to live through her, being from a broken home and an overworked mother was never fun but all that noise from my family wasn’t felt when I was in my foster home. I learned to read, I learned to write, I learned to be and it’s via her love and kindness that I became me. I lived in Weston- Super - Mare, a small seaside town in Somerset and it’s there as the only black person I felt like everyone else as I was and am like everyone else. I wasn’t really othered, I just was.  

And then London the energy I was given changed dramatically, I was 8 and I had to live with my mother and brothers. Brothers who thought I was too soft, forced their ideals on me, basketball, hip-hop all the things that made them happy made me unhappy. Then the school kids who laughed at my somerset accent, my big lips, tall frame, then in secondary school it moved to bullying, robbing me, calling me a faggot. Then onto workplaces the fashion industry that’s full of people willing to step over you in order to get ahead, that was super racist when I was designing and editing a few years back, then onto dating, men who just don’t seem to see me, understand me, care in full about me. I seem to end up with entitled individuals who feel they are the world and that’s it and that’s all, please me and leave. I decided to leave London after being burned out and bored of the energy it took from me without truly giving back, so many seemed so miserable, so hungry that I couldn’t feed into what it fed me.  

I then worked & lived in-between London & Dublin, for me Dublin was something but I couldn’t really feel it or understand, just as I was getting used to the energy it had to offer I jumped on a flight and was back again. I can say that what I saw and felt was connections, people who respected their families and friends and built strong bonds. When I was there I dated and met some really cool creative people and the time there I’ll remember and always honor. 

And then Berlin, three years now and it’s been a ride. The city gave me my creativity back, it gives more than it takes and I have love for it but am I in love with it? I’ve made great friends, I hang with a diverse group of individuals that have helped diversify my thoughts. My issue is the city is filled with creatives who say and never really do, broken people who use temporary solutions to try and fix their feelings. I applaud all those who seek help and I understand the struggle it is to exist, but what triggers me about Berlin is it’s a lot of broken people coming together to fall apart, using highness as a form of healing. Drugs, brokenness and all the other things like staying up for four days,  and not really working are applauded. The city has taught me that not everyone wants to be successful and failure or failing can become a life that’s celebrated. I’m not shaming anyone as I’ve taken much needed time out to be a mess, when i lost my job, lost my nanny and the guy I was seeing left me and again when I became freelance. Yet now I feel more myself than ever and I’m trying to nourish myself and trying to be around positive energy and creativity. Yet I honestly feel that Berlin brings me down. It could be a temporary feeling but it’s a feeling with weighted thoughts. 

Now Athens, I don’t live here but I’ve stayed here for a while, I’ve been three times and came back after being here last month and just falling for the feeling it gives. Last month we divided the trip and went Mykonos, a mistake but a lesson. 

Mykonos reminded me of this static stillness/ sameness played out across washboard abs and a mindset that seems to idolize an outdated ideal of masculinity in a large portion of the gay men holidaying there, it reaffirmed my position as a queer body and mind that believes in softer states with an open emotional connection to myself and others. The surface lacks true purpose to me, I believe in value that’s internal which means you can spread that without self doubt or hate being an anchor. 

But back to Athens for me it really did make me feel like I was someone seen and heard. It made me feel like I was living a half life prior. I was suddenly attractive and got attention to men I was attracted to, I went on dates and was taken out. Games were kept at a minimal, texts flowed and replies weren’t one word. Of course staying in Athens I’m also aware due to the economic situation that my money goes further, so for once I don’t have to worry about eating out or ordering a cab, the small worries that fill a day otherwise. 

The people seemed nice, the weather remained in the 30’s in late September & early October. The food was great and I just seemed to feel alive.It’s the common core that I seek to be honest, to connect with people who can make me feel something, a simple sensation, beyond the borders of myself and not just my body but also my mind stimulated. That’s what makes me feel lonely, lost and afraid. People are mean and don’t know who they are or what they want and so they project that onto the world, harming themselves with neglect and hurting others with abuse. That’s why I’m sad and mostly bored. Living in this city doesn’t help too much but I’m bored of complaining about Berlin as it’s a paradox. A city that I’d love to love but also love to hate. Instead I’m suspended in awe of a space that pushes me in different directions. I don’t know where I’ll go next or if this is just a phase and feeling. What I’m waiting for of course like the rest of the world is for Corona to end and to see how I feel and where I want to belong to. 

White people smiling

Since George Floyd’s death I’ve wandered from place to place feeling black but seeing whites, colorless shades played out on faces put before me, real life people, perfumed by an air of no cares, not many fucks and hardly many worries. There’s another layer to the world in which they dwell in, they aren’t on the same level as me they don’t think about race or sexuality those things are just there, instinctive and natural they can argue about things like capitalism and who it serves, they’re free to talk about lighter issues or deeper issues as they’ve got no anchors in place. No constant surface level distraction that detracts from their being. 

These are people That you think as they are seen everywhere in the places I inhabit, that everything would be nothing without them. But no matter what it’s not true and I know my value and I know my worth even if there’s the calculated systematic cruelty of being born different and the levels in which that effects me.  

The erasure of my people’s space in this world has been a timely one and is a heavy blow to handle. I will never forget going to the Vatican and not seeing one image of anyone that reflected my likeness, for a global religion that annoyed and angered me and confirmed the death of my very limited faith there and then. 

The issue is my conscious and refusal to be trapped by my struggle, I’m fighting to be freer, to think louder and exist in spaces that are left consciously aware and  enlightened. I can’t be forceful with how I awaken and arouse others, I can be honest and try and play to their empathetic self, if that doesn’t work I often wonder if they’re delusional or simply that they don’t care. Even if people showed up and showed out to the recent BLM protests that doesn’t mean all truly care. 

The Thing that hurt the most about the George Floyd situation is the fact that there was a knowledge accepted from all corners that my life was a lesser life and what I had been forcing myself to deny for so long was accepted by so many. It made me angry. Anger mixed with sadness with just the reality of the situation that in truth I feel that I’m being denied a life that I want and wish to live primarily due to the fact I am a person of color, that the community that my sexuality belongs to sees me as less than them, the industry in which my career is placed has erected gates and obstacles for people like me. 

To live and not see a self in the many scenes often played out is a level of erasure, screens, magazines, institutions, where were we and in turn where was I, who was I in relation to these spaces if I’m not represented, I’m not accepted, if I’m not accepted I’m denied a right to be. Culture for so long has revolved around whiteness perpetuating that whiteness is universal, neutral, palatable... 

When talking about inclusion Beyoncé’s ‘black is king’, made me emotional, I’m not even a Beyoncé fan but I see the power in seeing myself in scenes, a joyous celebration of self, selves we’ve been denied, underrepresented selves. 

Disney didn’t see black people for so long, as Disney like most media empires kept us locked out, but of course would gleefully take from us. This is evident in the difference in Lion King’s, in the 2019 version vs 1994, 94 exploited us while 19 celebrated us and offered us a seat at the table. I mean no disrespect to Elton John but why shouldn’t Africans or individuals of African descent sing, write and cherish their continent? In the 19 version they at least connected with Beyoncé + Childish Gambino, with a soundtrack filled with black talent, so many visuals uplifting and celebrating Africa, the multifaceted depths of blackness, bountiful beauty. 

With this in mind isn’t whiteness blandness? a level of bland that’s common and complacent, it’s not rule breaking or genre shaking, it sits perfectly in a system crafted for those who are the majority and if you’re not the majority then you assimilate and assume a form that fits, a politeness that’s palatable so they can say ‘I have black neighbors’ ‘ I know a Muslim and they don’t carry on like most ’ ‘Jed & John are a gay married couple they seem so normal’

But I’m not here to make people feel at ease if my presence disturbs them! As their comfort zones mean I remain uncomfortable, meaning we remain steps behind them. As they March on. 

There’s so much power in visibility, to be noted and feel noticed and included in conversations not just on a local level but a global one. I don’t want to say I’m activist but I’m active in wanting and working towards creating change not just for my race but for people I hardly see and to give purpose and action to. This includes what I identify as a black, non-binary queer but also for those who aren’t able bodied, for those who are trans and for those that the world has silenced in its exclusion. 

Less than them

Now I don’t want to talk about us and them but let’s be real there is an us and them and everybody that pretends there isn’t and keeps silent participates in the violence that a body and mind like mine has to experience on almost  daily basis. 

From dating to work to life, unconscious bias seeps  in to almost everything and mostly comes from everyone. I don’t think people understand that racism/ and therefore my race informs everything I do, how I’m seen, how I’m framed, how I’m perceived etc it’s been a struggle from day one but it’s a struggle I’ve learned to live with. 

The past weeks have been exhausting, it’s been so draining and tiring to see image after image of black pain. I understood that they don’t understand The things that we Have to go through in order to exist and so it’s not one example that needs to be seen but many, in order to make a case. 

I know that it’s coming from the right place sharing George Floyd’s literal last moments, sharing other pictures of pain, videos of whiteness used against blackness, but for me I have always thought that white people like to watch black pain as we are seen as similar Yet in their eyes not the same. 

I was tired prior to this of my peoples anguish played out in someway or another in different forms and formats watching my people be disrespected, shot, hunted and killed is a narrative that’s consumed so easily and that’s scary. 

I think about this a lot as I became tired of watching movies starring people who look like me, yet don’t live like me, as rarely do we have movies/ tv shows  with black leads where the individual leads a ‘normal’ life And what I mean by that is could a black person  live such a life as Rachel from friends. Lets say if Rachel was black and there was no comment on her colour and every scene and situation black Rachel was in was the exactly same as it is in the real world version of friends would that be a true depiction? Yet why can’t it be? It simply says that most movies made with people of colour featured their race has to be the forefront otherwise it can’t be consumed? And When race is at the forefront somehow it relates back to some level of pain/ trauma? 

There’s reason why I say I’m tired of films such as moonlight that don’t say anything new about either of my identities (black/queer) it’s just poverty porn and queer pain, repression and trauma packaged and repurposed, there’s a reason why I had to turn of ‘native son’ with Ashton Saunders, I applauded his style and his visual look in the film but I hated how once again he was a victim of circumstance..:. You see I honestly believe that if all people know from us is pain then what exactly is our story beyond that? I think of movies that touch upon the black London experience and Kidulthood captures some aspects of my youth but not in full, there’s more to me than the postcode wars, the gang banging and the drug dealing but you wouldn’t know that if you watched a large portion of the small output that touches upon the black british experience. 

If people keep seeing the same stories when it comes to people of colour then of course people are going to believe that that’s all that our existence is about. It’s propaganda! people are being fed lies and nothing is happening to change this. 

When it comes to me I’m an intelligent queer black man, who’s a second generation immigrant, I have a story that includes pain but that pain doesn’t define me, it informs me of the raw reality of the world but it isn’t all I know and it isn’t all I am. It’s sad to say but I hardly see myself on screen, I hardly see stories from people like me, there’s a reason why I cling to shows like ‘She’s Gotta have it’ & ‘Dear White people’ or ‘Moesha’ black lives that are excelling, living, breathing, doing, achieving. 

There’s a reason why Rihanna became an icon and idol to me, a young black girl with an accent, a lilt that said I’m black before being seen, she’s not ‘ratchet’ and she’s not ‘perfection’ she seemed human and she was celebrated by the gate keepers of fashion and culture. Moving on to starring in Gucci campaigns and being on the covers of Vogue and Harper’s. If you think a few years back would they ever give the black stars of the nineties such as Aaliyah, Brandy or Monica the same level of access? Vogue covers, high fashion campaigns etc, despite More specifically Brandy selling millions and being the star of a hit tv show. 

That’s how we were kept out and conditioned, we were allowed to enter through the same doors but not ascend to the same heights. Systems put in place to excel those who look like those behind the gates, yet you could entertain but never touch the same level of fame. 

On a more personal note I think about what would it be for the majority to feel like a minority and to have to have their race on their mind at most times even if it’s at the back of the mind it’s still there. 

Things that can trigger thoughts on race include living in a country and being on a tram and thinking that hey there’s no one who looks like me here, it’s going on holiday and wondering if it’s ‘safe’, it’s being called  a ‘beautiful black boy’ and wondering if they see me or my race, it’s being in a ‘cultural’ environment and wondering why there’s no people of colour, it’s seeing hard stares on the street and wondering if it’s my race, it’s the fact that I have an ‘English name’ Jeremy rather than using my Nigerian names Ifesinachi Anusionwu as my parents knew that they should dilute my Africaness from birth, it’s being asked questions about hip hop at work like I’m an ‘expert’, ‘it’s being told to go back to Africa’ ‘it’s getting out of a cab in Munich with Oberpollinger bags and the security guards asking you to follow them into the store as they’re astounded by the fact you can afford such items, despite working for the Kadewe group at the time’ 

What’s been taken from me I can’t get back, what will continue to be taken from me I’ll have to learn to live with. My dignity and respect maybe diminished, I maybe muted, discounted and discouraged but I see myself with courage and at full price. I live a life that I feel I’m entitled to even if that’s not what the world warrants me. I have to live with dignity and pride as I’m proud of my skin, I’m proud of our history, of how we’ve built worlds diverse cultures under extreme oppression. 👊🏾 

Human first.

Exhausted existence

So the other day, A friend asked me if I was okay, I paused and sighed as it was something I was asking myself and to be asked this must have meant that people have been feeling a change or distance from me, so it disturbed me. 

Nonetheless, I’m thankful for this question, as I think it’s super important to be asked those simple three words because the question is quite complex. If you tell the truth then maybe you’ll be able to say I’m not okay and hopefully if you’re not okay, you are able to discuss that with the person asking without being shut down and in an open and honest manner as I did and was able to. 

My reply: ‘ lol honestly I don’t know, I think I’m just bored by everything, like trying to go on dates, going back to work, all of it just seems so mundane and abstract... it doesn’t feel like anything belongs to me anymore like life doesn’t belong to me,  it’s just a play, playing at the theatre, that I have a part in, but I’m not directing. 

Basically, I just forgot how exhausting it is to exist, things like going on a date yesterday, seeing my colleagues, ppl being rude at Saturn, seeing a few people I know when out etc. I forgot how much energy the small actions we have to do to exist take, and now I’m like what is all this for? I actually hate drinking, smoking and socialising gives me chills! it feels like a mid-life crisis at 30 lol, as now the world has paused I’m wondering what the fuck was/is my life and I’m questioning it more so as we slowly resume’ 

To put this in perspective for the past eight weeks I have learned to live a slower softer more in tune with myself life. For seven of those weeks, I didn’t drink alcohol because for me those vices remind me of the night. In The Absence of a party and the lack of peer pressure to project a louder lively self, I was able to stay stiller/ silent. The drink has always allowed me to be more social and to keep at bay the shyness/ awkwardness that cripples me. So this has been the longest time since I started drinking at 20 that I have gone without. 

I honestly feel like I just don’t know who I am anymore,  I feel like I’m definitely not who I was and even before corona had started  I felt a disconnect. So for me, change was coming anyway, but this tidal wave has just hastened it and forced me to evaluate and review at a pace that disturbs me, as it left no room to outgrow who I was. 

Prior to this, my thirst for feeling mostly resided in missing tenderness so led me to run about consuming men and drinking vast quantities in a short space of time. Honestly, those actions can only add so much to a feeling before senses become blurred and you stop feeling and start forgetting moments, losing both time and experiences and ultimately ending up numb. 

I started to feel again recently, more a self I liked and enjoyed being, and also a large part of that was down to getting a job. I spent most of the last year freelance, burned out and bored with working life in Germany. I was questioning who I was and my worth. Now it seems with work, taking over and me slowly finding confidence in a vision and view that’s appreciated, I’m more than thankful that my passions can slow the need to constantly be on the chase. 

How I fill my days now is mostly work, playing animal crossing, talking to friends via Instagram and listening to podcasts. I find it hard to relax fully so one of my favourite hobbies, reading has come to a halt. Podcasts it seems has taken readings place. 

I found that in this disconnect I connected to people who I didn’t know via the podcasts, people who thought similarly, with ideologies and views I align with or didn’t know I did/ found hard to understand, so it’s helped shape certain opinions and articulate them fuller, with someone else eloquently expressing a feeling, I didn’t know how to feel. 

A feeling I’ve been having is exhaustion. A few people I know/ around me have died in these times, people haunted and with demons that they couldn’t really rid. I’m scared and exhausted by this situation. 

So right now it’s exhausting to be around me and I’m exhausted by others, the constant need for validation, saying silly and superficial things I don’t understand or agree with, making everything about themselves, it’s just like what’s the purpose and point of existing, if most interactions and experiences are bland and basic, or if we are doing things that destroy us when we come together? 

It’s hard all of a sudden to find meaning in the meaningless, whereas before the moments of letting go that lead to joyous occasions have been removed and can be considered toxic. I’m anxious and others are anxious, so much so that it makes for a hostile ground instead of healing and enlightening. You have friends doing what you won’t do and you do what others won’t do so you’re all silently judging or laughing at each other, let’s say it’s not fun.

I just want the best for everyone around me and it’s exhausting to see so much potential not exploited to its fullest. I continuously want to help people and I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help it, it’s in my nature!  Why rise alone when you can glow up together? Anyway I know it can be annoying and come across obnoxious so 

I have to learn to control myself and allow my friends to live at a pace that they want and prefer. 

I just have to learn to do what I need to do in order to be happier healthier and more stable in mind, body and spirit and remove myself from whatever seems to invade happier situations. 

And this is why Corona has got me asking myself who am I? honestly, I don’t know, I’m asking myself who I was and I’m wondering why I was that person, doing what I was doing? I’m asking myself who will become and I’m scared. I’m scared of becoming a home bunny who finds joy in ultramundane moments, like Reading papers and growing plants, while stroking my cat, drinking chai lattes, placing coasters on minimalist ultra-expensive furniture and slow days, sipping long drinks at SoHo house on my newly acquired membership! 

I don’t have it all figured out as I don’t know who I’ll be when we all emerge from this social slumber. One thing I do know is that I’d like to leave the misery that has accompanied me for so long behind, I want to combat misery and learn how to live with it so I can move on to my next steps and hopefully leave it where it belongs- my past. 

Part of a past

It’s honestly quite a hard pill to swallow as `i start to understand that I am no longer of the times, I’m present and in the present yet my relevance is fading. With every passing day, my grip and grasp on the times gets looser and looser as I get lost, swimming with the current yet drowning in the now, as the present becomes more prevalent. 

It’s no longer considered groundbreaking for a thirty-year-old to write a novel or complete an art project, I can’t be deemed a prodigy for doing something that artists are expected to do - create.  Essentially I can still make noise,  I can still create things that people see and speak about but now I’m competing not just with myself and my contemporaries but with a generation behind me. One that’s more in-tune with how the world will be, while I believe that individuals in their 30’s sum up the way the world is and those older how it was/ how it became. 

I think about the last decade at around this time 10 years ago, when I left being a teenage behind and scrambled into my 20’s. I was in a position of power, as the age group a decade behind me were 10-year-olds and those before me were well onwards and up in age. I had vision and optimism and only had to compete with the older generation - all those who came before. Now I’m part of a collective looking at those who come after me.

There’s now a whole generation of individuals that are able to articulate their feelings and thoughts through song, writing, dance etc and reflect a world familiar to me yet unknown in full. Youth in full bloom rebelling against what's normal to them/ what they’ve always known. 

The digital world, for example, isn’t a foreign place in which they’ve had to migrate to and integrate, they’re a native and know the language fluently. Individuals who’ve grown up never knowing what it’s like to disconnect and always having this overload/ constant stream of information/ content. 

Instagram is no longer the present/ fresh, it’s something known and for some can seem stale. You’ve got the younger gen expressing themselves on Tik Tok. Swathes of kids bored of the stale stiff personas presented to people on Instagram and have now moved on to showcase their personalities. 

This means doing dance challenges and comedic takes on contemporary culture. It’s no coincidence that in COVID times Tik Tok has boomed with people looking for an escape from the bleak reality. It’s in a sense the opposite to that of what the influencers of Instagram produce. People who are basically versions of the same using a template that Kim Kardashian has perfected. Instagram is all about showboating! Pretty people, posing next to pretty buildings, eating pretty plates all to create a pretty picture, to sum up, a beautiful lifestyle. 

It makes me think of my age when I get but can’t grasp Tik Tok as a channel! I know I’m not young but also I'm not old yet at the same time, I’m not as connected as those behind me who’ve grown up always knowing the things I’ve had to adapt to and therefore have a completely different perspective. 

I think of my own 20’s which largely consisted of blurred nights and fast touches instead of the softer and sensual.  I wanted to feel and remember everything, yet now I know that not all I live should be remembered and that’s what memories are for and what I use my Instagram for to record, collect and connect. 

There I see moments that stand out when and I’m going through a painful phase like now scrolling through my Instagram is like flipping through a photo album, it helps remind me of all those special hours and minutes lost but recorded with people I love and cherish, it still brings a smile to my face even to think about it at this moment as I write. 

Now with ten years flown by It’s hard not to think about wasted time but then how was it wasted when I feel I’ve lived? Plus I don’t regret much, as mostly all things are lessons. In any case. I no longer feel I have this power or fire within me that I had when I was 20. It hasn’t been extinguished but it’s been dimmed down to a point where I feel calm and subdued in a sense. In this calmer state. Back then, 10 years ago, I wanted to change the world but now the world has changed me and the way I think, the way I am and the way I act. Essentially impacting on who I’ve become - more subdued.  

I’ve become weaker and I’m torn and a bit wore down and burned out by the way the world works,  I have no/ less time for individuals who say things and never do, I have become more impatient, as I know more of myself I know I want to know less of certain types of people or places. I’ve started to roll eyes and give deep sighs when people say things I deem dumb. 

I’m not perfect and this world is far from that. As I inherited the freedoms fought for by those who came before me. People like myself who were once in chains or killed for loving who they love.

I do believe that the young are the ones that can truly fight to heal this world. One filled with savage economics that brings about a disproportionate amount of inequality. A world that seems to be on self destruct mode as we continue to press buttons that poison the planet.

Then there’s the noise of segregation with the battles, the barriers, the borders all due to the things that divide us that are in truth so small yet seems so big when a point is picked up, pointed out and picked at continually like a scab until it’s bloody and raw, so much so that wars are able to be crafted and created because of it. 

All I know is that I want to see a world one day that’s filled with less hate and more love, one where we cherish and understand each other, regardless of race, religion, nationality, sexuality as it still baffles me the way the world worked, the way it was before and the way it is now. 

A link to a land unknown...

Men have never really stayed long in my life my father was always on ‘business trips’ and then abandoned us fully. By the time I was 8 his sporadic visits to London stopped and the little hope my mother held onto for her marriage vanished. They were quite young when they met in their very early twenties with both studying law in Germany, Heidelberg, where they lived married and had their first child my brother.  My mother fell pregnant again pretty fast after he was born which meant my brothers were very close in age and one year apart in school. In many ways they were like twins, they had the same friends, same hobbies and also taste and tried to impose that upon me! I was 8/ 7 years their junior, and started living with them full time at nine years old after moving back to London from my prIvate foster home, where I lived in with my sister, in Somerset. The fractured home was due to my father deciding he wanted to spend more time in Nigeria, leaving my mother, who had to work, two jobs to get by to raise the family. This meant there was no time to raise young children, it differed with my brothers as they were eight and seven years old meaning they could be more self sufficient, where as I was just born and my sister was just three. By the time we came together again as one family unit I was

already queer as fuck! Belting out Mariah and whispering ‘slow down Mase you’re killing me’ from Brandy’s, sitting on top of the world and being strictly told not to and wondering why! They tried time and time again to impose a certain sort of masculinity that never stuck and so I learned it was best to keep my distance from them.

I’ve never really trusted or understood men and still don’t! I was raised by women,  my nanny from birth alongside my sister, my mother from 9 to 15, my teachers, my bosses & mentors were mostly women -I owe myself to women. The first woman I remember was my grandmother, there was something mystical and unknown about her, they first came to visit when I was very young and my grandfather in no other way to put it was on his way out. Blind and ill I watched as he was cared for by the women around him. It led me to question what really is strength when connected to the physical vs the emotional? Especially as a once strong man, who started an accountancy firm, who made money, who survived Nigeria’s civil war, who was so proud to connect all these things and utter about "a man making ones own way through life" to then fall victim to life’s curse and suffer ill health, only be cared for not by men but by women. 

My grandparents were very Nigerian in many ways, Christians, who believed in a certain order. This was also passed on in a less rigid way to their daughter, my mother. Who I learned early on that she would never fully understand me, and honestly still doesn’t but we’ve learned to live with understanding that our misunderstandings don’t need to be understood in order to find a level of connection. When I was younger, I saw her accent and views as dated and connected to colonial views, imposed upon her not by choice but default. I watched as she adapted a kind of interpreted Englishness to get by, as a way to be more widely accepted into the often hostile and racist Britain of the 90’s. I noted that she sometimes looked on at me in horror, as I was born with the language she had to learn, manners and a sensibility that were first hand to me came secondary to her. I was this weird wild queer child in a world that was too free for her liking. She was connected in my foolish youthful mind to Nigeria, which always felt far, distant and foreign. 

So when I think of my homeland, Nigeria, a question pops up. What leads me there now but a father who was absent for most of my life? Nigeria is my native home, Igbo is my tribe, my people, my language. I am Nigerian but I don’t feel it, I don’t feel fully British either but I do feel like a Londoner, Tottenham fills me with horror and pride equally, it’s complexities have shaped me and allowed me to become who I am. 

Nigeria has been on my mind for a while, my thoughts have wandered there and a want has surfaced. Around 2018 I decided I wanted to go back and visit. I wanted to ask my father why he left my mother and us with nothing but each other. I still want to, to close a chapter of my life and hear from him his feelings, his thoughts yet also his fears as he was younger than I now with a full family. So I can listen, learn and hopefully forgive. I also wanted to explore the arts scene and see if I can learn and connect with how the artists see the world as reading ‘Half of a yellow sun’ and ‘Things fall apart’ soothed, horrified and educated me. 

I will never really know Nigeria, and mostly likely I’ll never speak Igbo, a language that my ancestors spoke up until me and my siblings. Its sad to say that even if I decide to explore it and live there my sensibilities will always be British and the countrymen will always hold me at arms length. 

I’ve only been once when I was 8, that’s 22 years ago now, I was a spoilt little brat, that was driven around in Mercedes and had bodyguards, I saw the world outside from a car window! Yet I’m not here to paint it black and make bleak pictures about the land or add to a canon that laregely depicts the country in an often desperate light, I'm just saying what I saw from the mind of a child who had never seen or known much beyond the comforts of my English home. 

Yes there was children selling ‘ice water’ in the sweltering heat, yes kids would run after the car and I’d wind down the window to gaze at them never seeing so many faces that looked so similar to my own in one place, dipping into my pocket to give them Naira, baffled by the value of the notes. Yes the police stopped and searched us but hearing our accents and knowing my father they let us pass, Yet I watched in amazement as the civilians behind us were taken out of their vehicles and searched vigorously and violently. I remember looking back as the dust rose and seeing distorted scenes play out, yes I saw a dead body of a women on the side of the road with a vulture eaten buttocks and yes these visions have stayed with me and in a sense haunted me, as even know they’re so sharp and vivid. 

When I think of Nigeria, I also think of my grandmother who lived there and lived through so much. She saw her country freed from the British, she saw a new nation Biafra rise and then fall with the cost of this, 2 million of her tribesmen and women murdered, lost, raped and mutilated, she raised nine children and then sent them across the globe to study and raise families,  saw her husband fade way and learned to live with the ache of loss. She moved to America, spent time in England and then decided to live out the rest of her life back where she was born, as my Grandmother died in January of this year, a link in an unbroken chain that stretched back to the beginning, to the start of wherever/ whoever I came from, broken now she’s gone. 

I was due to go back to Nigeria in June to bury my grandmother, but with Corona who knows when this will happen?Yet I know it has to be soon as we have to now bury both my Grandmother and her daughter, my Aunty who also just passed away, last week in London. She was in her fifties and had underlying health issues, and so it seems that Corona claimed my family’s first victim, the first of my mother’s brothers and sisters to die in adulthood. 

Now that I'm stuck in Europe, not able to leave my house, city or country, it really does have me thinking about Nigeria and who I am and what I owe to a land I don’t know, to cousins and half siblings that I’ve never met and a father I want and hope to learn more about. As the European economy and my life are both placed on hold with the virus threatening to take more people close and far from me before their time. I think of what I want to do, who I want to know and that I honestly do desire to see my homeland and know more of it and in turn more of myself. I wan to bury both my Aunt and Grandmother to say goodbye to them and a certain kind of hello to my father and to talk to people who look like me and understand the mindset more and to travel and know a land that at this time right now is unknown to me.