home

When I first arrived in Africa I was eight years old. I hated it. I hated the extreme conditions, the dry sand, the hot air, the scorching wind, and the bright blinding light. Even the food tasted of dust. Bread was hard. Water was different. My skin burnt and blistered and, even though I was able to play in the swimming pool, life was a general misery. I couldn’t go shopping with my parents without feel waves of nausea due to the extreme heat. I recall many a mid-day spent sitting in the shade on the side of the street sipping a coke to try to regain some sense of normality.

But then I started to see the colours, the wildlife, the vegetation, the people. I started to discover a place of unique and diverse cultures, animals, plants and regions. As time passed by I fell in love with all of these facets of African life and felt proud to be a part of it all. In my comfort, many things started to fall into place and I started to develop a love of music, literature, and film and it seemed that my favourite contributors of these arts were the Americans. Naturally, as a result, I developed an interest in America and decided I wanted to travel. I eventually left Africa and travelled to America only to discover that I was trapped in the midst of an identity crisis. I had spent the majority of my life in Africa, had been to school, college, and university there, and yet I was identified as British both in Africa and America.

With the hopes of resolving this crisis I decided I wanted to live in England again. England, the country of my birth, the land I forever missed no matter where else on earth I happened to be. Eventually, I fulfilled this goal and moved back. I was fortunate and ended up in a beautiful town named Guildford in Surrey – a great place to begin the rediscovery of my roots. However, I soon discovered that people were not certain whether I was British, African or American and I was even more astonished that this seemed to matter so much. In other countries I had found a great desire and hope in the local people that they could meet as many people from diverse backgrounds as possible whereas it seemed that the English, O great people of understanding, peace, tolerance, and shelter, were often determined to mix only with the English. I changed jobs and started to work further south in a less conservative-minded area and eventually found that there was tolerance for diversity of race and sexuality and I started, at last, to feel at home in my so-called home… but I realize that the identity crisis is still there.

As I grow older, still living in England, I long more and more for Africa and for America and I wonder if I will ever feel a sense of ‘home’ anywhere in the world.