‘I take strength in my difference — I’ve never felt more confident’
Zainab Boladale was just four when she left Lagos, Nigeria, to begin a new life in Co Clare. Now 20, she reflects on how she has embraced her dual nationality
IINITIALLY didn’t want to move to Ireland. At four years old, I didn’t understand why it made sense to move to a new side of the world. I was happy where I was.
I had not yet realised the desperate economic struggle and lack of opportunity within my native place, the city of Lagos, Nigeria. Despite the fact that I left at such a young age, I still have memories of friends, family and our home.
Co Clare was were our new life was to begin. My mother had friends in Ennis who had told her of how peaceful it was and that it was the ideal place to bring us up in. I started primary school in Scoil Chriost Ri. When you’re that young, you find it easy to make friends because children are so accepting. There were children from all sorts of backgrounds and we all played together. I owe a lot of my understanding about diversity to being exposed to so many cultures within that school. We never thought it strange that a Polish girl was good at playing the uilleann pipes or that a black girl loved to speak Irish.
It was there that one of my teachers realised that I had a talent for languages. He encouraged me to read books above my literacy skills and would sometimes pick me when a poem needed to be read out loud for the class. In the sixth year, he told my mother that I would greatly benefit from attending an Irish-speaking secondary school.
As a pre-teen, the last thing I wanted was to go to a school that my friends weren’t attending. Despite my deep resistance, it was just where I ended up.
During my time in the Irish secondary school, I was hit with a wave of realisation of how different I was. I felt every inch of melanin in my skin as I was surrounded by rural white Irish children who all had gone to the same and primary school. Most of them had never had a black person in their lives before meeting me. During my three years there, I felt every ounce of what it meant to be foreign and different.
As my confidence and grades dropped, I was also trying to wrap my head around whether I was experiencing casual racism. Some comments made me do a doubletake and wonder if I was overreacting. I remember being told about the racist comments their parents made and it would be followed up with “It’s funny... but you know, I don’t think that” and I’d laugh, because how else could one respond at that age?
Despite the fact that I genuinely loved learning, I hated every minute of my first years in secondary school because of how it made me feel. In my third year, I convinced my mother to let me go to a neighbouring school where I had friends. I don’t regret going to an Irish-speaking secondary school because I loved having the fluency, but it made me unhappy.
I wanted to work in the media, but I was discouraged by my family. In short, they felt it was too risky. I remember talking to a respected family friend and they subtly suggested that they didn’t see a potential for a black person in Irish media. Hearing it was truly crushing.
I’m now in my final year of journalism at Dublin City University. There have been times I’ve been hit by the realisation that I’m the only black person on my course, at press events, in newsrooms — I try not to dwell on it. Instead, I take strength in my difference, assuring myself that this is an asset. I’ve never felt more assured and confident.
I come from a generation which is often criticised. We lack purpose and drive, some say. But there’s something to be said for this generation. The biggest critics of racism and discrimination are the young. Two years ago, I wrote about my dual nationality. The response was mixed. From my own age group, I received positivity and encouragement. The negativity came from older people. My article also sparked something rather more distressing. The piece I wrote was reposted on a website dedicated to anonymously insulting people of colour and ridiculing their viewpoints.
I think one of the biggest reason that people feel justified in their racist reasoning is because we’re mostly shown the negatives that multiculturalism has had on society. People hold on to bad news longer.
While I think Irish people on a whole are welcoming and accepting, recent incidents such as some slightly negative reaction to Syrian families being given refuge in Ballaghaderreen make me think. On one website recently, there was an exaggerated article claiming 250 black Africans rioted in Henry Street. It never happened. That kind of thing worries me. I wonder how long it would take for the acceptance I feel in Ireland to change.