‘TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS MADE ME WHO I AM’
One woman shares her journey of self-discovery
For years I’d dreamed of the day I would finally return to Britain. The dream had kept me going through floggings and the ridicule of relatives who bemoaned my ‘whiteness’, despite my black skin. In 1989, that dream came true. But, after a flight from Nigeria to London, I was held in detention for two hours with my young son because immigration officers didn’t believe my British passport was legitimate. After confirming that I was, in fact, a British citizen, an officer asked when I intended to leave the country. ‘I’m not leaving,’ I tossed the words at him, angrily. ‘I’ve come home.’
I was born in London in 1962 to Nigerian parents who came to the
UK as students. Studying, working and raising me was a challenge, so, like other West African students, they arranged for me to be privately fostered by a white family.
Aged one, I went to live with a woman called Nan. For the next few years, I only saw my parents through visits. My memories of Nan are of smiles, cuddles and warmth. Tom, her son, treated me to sweets and fish and chips. Her husband, Pop, snoozed in the garden as I rode my tricycle, albeit with one eye half-open in case I ran over his flowers. Alongside me, Nan fostered a blond boy, who was around my age. Together, we played games of Batman & Robin in the terraced Victorian house in north London. I lived an idyllic life; I didn’t know any other brown-skinned children, but it didn’t matter. I was loved and I knew it. But when I was five, I was rudely awakened to the notion that I was different. After an argument over a doll, I stormed out of a friend’s house. She ran after me and shouted, ‘Don’t forget your stupid jacket, you black monkey!’ I stiffened as I felt my blood boil. I swivelled around, took a deep breath and bellowed, ‘I am not a monkey!’ Before stomping off home.
The incident had a profound impact on me. ‘Why am I not white like everybody else?’ I asked Nan. I met her answer, that God made some people white and other people black, with a further, ‘If I scrub very hard, can I wash the black skin off?’ Aghast, Nan told me a story of another child who’d tried this, leaving his skin raw and bleeding. Her response, followed by a cuddle and kiss, was enough to wipe the idea out of my mind.
In 1968, my parents finished their studies and planned their return home. They collected me from Nan’s. I was devastated. I missed Nan’s lavish devotion and bedtime stories. To make matters worse, I now had three younger siblings who took my parents’ attention. Before we left England, Dad let Nan visit to say goodbye. After much hugging, Dad promised that he’d allow me to return and visit. A flight and sea journey later, I found myself thrust under the furious glare of the African sun.
ADJUSTING TO A NEW LIFE
My parents were Yoruba, from western Nigeria. Yoruba culture valued uniformity, collectivism and ‘doing things the way they’d always been done, so things could remain the way they had always been’. Family was everything. Our newly rented one-bed dwelling in Lagos housed nine people, with five under the age of four. Dad’s mother, Mama, who came to live with us, arrived with two extra toddlers, the children of her brother. Dad, who got a job as a shipping manager, knew it was his duty to look after his mother and other family members who needed support.
I swapped my comfortable bed at Nan’s for a mat on the floor of the living room. Outdoor cooking and bathing, pit toilets and power outages became my new normal. Dad couldn’t afford to feed us or replace the shoes on our growing feet. For the next five years, I walked barefoot. I hated it and missed my old life.
Mama ruled over everyone except Dad and she loathed my uselessness. I didn’t speak Yoruba, knew nothing of the customs and would not stop asking ‘why?’. I challenged authority and spoke when I was not spoken to, so Mama regularly flogged me with a cane. ‘This one, she won’t stay married,’ she’d say, pointing a finger at me. My battles with Mama left me miserable and isolated, dreaming of my escape back to England.
As I edged into my teen years, I had frequent skirmishes with my mother and extended family. In their eyes, I was feisty, and my parents were running out of time to tame me. I was called Oyinbo, meaning the ‘white one’. It was not a compliment but an aspersion on my seemingly ‘white’
It was abundantly clear to me, and everyone else, that I didn’t belong
behaviours, namely my refusal to conform to cultural expectations, lack of humility and how I challenged authority. It was abundantly clear to me, and everyone else, that I simply didn’t belong.
Over the years, I maintained contact with Nan. When I turned 17, Dad allowed me to spend a glorious summer in London. Although I’d spent years plotting my escape, I was two-thirds of the way through a teacher training course and secretly engaged to my boyfriend. After six weeks with
Nan, I returned to Nigeria. Three months later, I was pregnant.
HOME AT LAST
In the space of a few months,
I got married, completed my training and gave birth to a baby girl, Lara. But my grandmother’s predictions were right. I had no stomach for the Yoruba expectations of wives, who were deemed second-class citizens in their husband’s families. I had a reputation as a terrible wife, not because my husband wasn’t happy, but because the elders in his family weren’t. My husband was also born British and raised by a white foster mother for the first six years of his life. We were a team fighting a culture that would not let us be. Eight years and two more children (a girl,
Leye, and boy, Deolu) later, we moved back to the UK. I arrived with Deolu in July 1989. Within the month, I got a job as a teacher. I went back for Lara and Leye at the end of August, and my husband joined us two months later.
I’d imagined life in Britain as a utopia. In my mind’s eye, it was the place where I’d belong; a country where everyone was equal and fairness reigned supreme. But it wasn’t long before the blinkers came off as I battled prejudice, discrimination and poverty. Just setting up a home and buying essentials for my family was a challenge. My child benefit application was ignored for months, even though I was paying tax. Despite my decent job, my bank rejected my credit applications because, according to the manager, Nigerian women had a reputation for disappearing with bank loans. Over the years, I faced some discrimination linked to the colour of my skin. I had to draw on
We were a team fighting a culture that would not let us be
the personal resolve and determination that helped me through my childhood in Lagos to break down the barriers preventing me from progressing.
SENSE OF BELONGING
The need to belong was an all-consuming emotion and nothing triggered it more than the question, ‘Where are you from?’ It reminded me that I was an outsider. So, I turned against my culture and doubled down on my efforts to become properly British. I worked hard at losing my heavy Nigerian drawl. I wouldn’t eat the food or wear traditional Yoruba clothing. I barely had any Black friends, and I cut myself off from my family, except my parents, siblings and a handful of others. I visited theatres and museums, immersing myself in learning about what I thought it meant to be British. I was fortunate that people saw my potential and supported my efforts to establish my teaching career. I climbed the ranks from subject leader to deputy headteacher, then to headteacher of an inner-london primary school in 1997. The more successful and self-assured I became at work, the more I felt I could address the question that had been on a loop inside my brain: ‘Who am I?’
I thought about the cultures that criss-crossed my life. I realised that, to some extent, I valued the Yoruba emphasis on kinship and respect for the elderly. I could see, clearly, that although British society proclaimed equality and fairness for all, there was deeply embedded institutionalised racism hidden beneath a veneer of politeness. Still, I valued the British emphasis on self-reliance and accountability.
An amalgamation of those values became my guiding principles, and I realised I was more than one identity. I was Black, I was Yoruba and I was British. With that came the understanding that I was not alone in my struggles. Many of my pupils had Yoruba heritage and were suffering the same cultural conflict and identity crisis. I used this personal knowledge to shape my leadership style and influence my thinking process as a headteacher and later as a school improvement adviser. It would fuel my need to reach out to help other children and their families navigate the conflicting cultural expectations between home and school.
My children are grown-ups now, with successful careers, and I have two beautiful granddaughters. Though Mama predicted otherwise, my husband and I have been together for 40 years. We rattle around our empty nest together, dreaming up new adventures.
The experience of being stuck between two worlds made me who I am today. It taught me about the innate human need to belong to something or someone. It taught me to value myself, who I am and what I can contribute to humanity within my sphere of influence. Alongside my work with school leaders, I support families navigating cultural conflict, helping them find a way to be British and everything else that they truly are.
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