“From a young person’s perspective, in today’s age, something that I really experience quite often is that feeling of hopelessness, that well in my lifetime nothing’s going to change. Because when you really unpack the systems that are in power and the people who ‘represent us’, what they have in mind and who founded the ideologies that they protect and live by, they were founded most of the time upon oppression and relied upon exploitation to come into fruition and those aren’t things that I feel that in a society like ours should be following and idealizing in politics. When you see the extent of it, it’s really overwhelming, but I guess I always have to remind myself, but how did how did my ancestors, or anybody who’s been affected by colonialism, survive? How did they hope for the future?”
“I particularly have experienced since the George Floyd incident and the awakenings that happened across the world where people who maybe may have felt in their quiet space upset or angry or would be able to express that this for them feels unjust, they found themselves on the street for the first time in this very public display of solidarity. And since then I have, you know, living in this space at this moment, experienced so much demand for spaces where we can explore race and equity.”
“It’s a really emotional journey – having discussions and looking into the past. It’s really important – learning your history, not only from your own community or own ethnicity or race but from others – learning about general world history and how it interplays – it’s so powerful and those stories that have been been transmitted through time teach us a lot.”
“I’ve always watched migration and felt a deep, visceral sense of pain when I see our cultural, what I call the soul soil, this inner part of us, eroding, whether we came wilfully or not. And when we come to spaces like these, when we’re looking at intergenerational knowledge sharing, meaning-making, wayfinding, this is what I feel we’re doing here. I will always be very keenly looking for the cultural perspectives. That is what interests me most and that’s what I’m passionate about… I feel we all have a contribution to make and it would be my desire that all of us who are grappling with the impact of slavery and colonialism are able to, are able to find this illumination, this awakening, because many will never get it for the whole of their awakening .. but will suffer, will be carrying the trauma.”
“Growing up I don’t think I would say there was anything like unity. A lot of fighting. A lot of fighting and disagreement – this was part of the dynamics between my parents, especially because of the culture of intimidation of women. My father was himself under pressure because according to culture my mother shouldn’t have been producing all these girls and that was the first time we were made aware of conflict in even being born a girl. And in our ignorance, we wondered Why are you going to hospital and buying these girls? Why don’t you mix them up a bit? So growing up I did not quite understand all those things but I knew there was tension between them, which was exacerbated whenever any of my father’s family visited. My mother had six girls and then a boy. And when the boy was born, we had a very big party. When he turned one, we had another party. And none of us girls ever had a birthday party. So what are they communicating to the girls? We were all excited- we enjoyed the party mood, of course. But subconsciously… Girlhood being a bit of a burden. So both parents had a different level of pressure, all due to ignorance, but it left its impact on me…. I was also a very angry person growing up because I had absorbed the tension in the environment into my system … and I was so angry… like a sponge you just take everything in. I absorbed it and I was like I’m going to stand up to the bullies of life. I’m going to defend my turf, – everybody was my enemy.”
“In our African context, you know, people look at the generation that we are in together. Some of them got babies before or got married, and then they look at you, why is the daughter of so and so not getting married? So sometimes not really your own immediate family but uncles and aunties start pointing fingers, why is the daughter of so and so not getting married? I thought that was the biggest challenge that I found, people judging me for what I’m not really. Despite that pressure, I told myself I needed to finish my school and have a family in the future, but I wanted to really have a good home and good family. And so after I finished high school, I of course wanted to move on. And then there was the fighting in South Sudan and so it was not very clear as to how to go but I was able to finish my high school and so we got married, moved to Kenya and then I joined uni, and then the children started coming, Grace started to come, and yeah it was not easy having a baby and also a student at the same time and also a young mother and so I struggled through all this but I was able to go through motherhood and also my academic and also learning from what my parents taught me as a young adult so I just thought it’s good to respect my upbringing because that would bring also honour to them and also to God.”
“In school growing up also as a refugee, because I also had that experience, because my parents fled to Uganda as refugees, and so growing up as a refugee was also something that was quite challenging. In schools, I think that was discrimination, they would call us names, you know, they would call us names and you know sometimes you really feel so like this not really indeed my country yeah so I think that was when the moment I felt discriminated against you know so I felt like really indeed I’m a refugee I don’t have a place to call home but having grown up in Uganda I thought Uganda was my country but as you grow up that’s when you get to know oh this is Uganda is not my country my country is actually South Sudan we are here as refugees but when you go home that is not the space that you find and then you go to school you are treated as they used to call us names.”
“I come from South Sudan and I think the country in South Sudan is almost like Somaliland because as children or growing up you’re not supposed to question the elders even when they are doing something that is not right – you are not supposed to say daddy, that is wrong that would be considered like you are disrespectful – unlike the recent trend now – like my own children when they are not happy with something that I have said, they will say, Mummy, that is not right – they will tell me upfront. But in my upbringing you are not allowed to challenge certain things. With my children, I think they will challenge me and I understand because I’ve gone through things that I was not able to challenge. And so when they challenged me, we had a conversation on some of the things. And I heard a kid saying, Mommy, you always say the same thing! I said, yeah, I keep saying the same thing. Until it gets into you … Growing up, we were communally disciplined. Somebody would just meet me on the way and maybe I’m doing something that is unpleasant. He or she has the right to discipline me there and then. But if I’m disciplining our generation today, they will say, who are you to discipline me? You are not my mum, you are not my dad.
“Sometimes on the trains – I don’t know if it’s me or if others here have ever had this happen – you find somebody maybe reading – it seems like he’s reading a newspaper – but not actually reading the newspaper, he’s looking at you, you know? Looking at you like suspiciously, I think – and I just wonder, is it because of the skin that I’m wearing?
“Literally this morning on the train, I was looking out the window and I looked up and I met eyes with this guy and he kept staring for a good couple of seconds and then turned away and I was like Okay, that just happened – But that’s a regular thing. I’m not gonna lie – when I was coming to [***] I had the mindset of okay, something like this is going to happen, I’m going to have to mentally prepare for it. But even that in itself is a bit sad you have to prepare for… suspicion or hatred or something.”
“There was one day I was crossing the road, I was going home from the station, and I was pressing the button to cross the road, and a guy walked past me and he was like look out everyone she’s gonna blow up the traffic light and then I looked around and I was like oh okay that just happened – and I don’t know if this is worse or good but - no one says anything. People look around, they know what happened, they acknowledge it and they carry on. And I just have to carry on. And I’m like, that just happened, that guy just said that to me and I can’t do anything about it because, one, he’s a guy, I’m a girl, and two, I need to go home. And there’s no one to say, oh no, that was wrong – it’s just something that we have to deal with and just get used to – which seems evil.”
“In 2019 when there were the big, big Black Lives Matter protests everywhere and a bunch of language was coming out and people speaking about their experiences – that was a kind of period of awakening for me, in the sense that that was the first time I felt like I had the language to articulate some of the experiences I’ve been through. The term microaggression changed my life – I remember always people would say things I’d have a weird feeling about them, but I wouldn’t be able to say why it was weird – so I remember being seven maybe eight in school and having teachers say you’re actually quite smart you speak quite well you’re very articulate. And I’ll be like, why would I not be articulate? Why wouldn’t I speak well? Why wouldn’t I be articulate? At seven, eight, not consciously, but subconsciously, you’re like, you’ve spoken to me and my friend, and you didn’t say it to my white friend, you just said it to me, why is that? And like weird things that, more obviously, in sixth form, when I was doing my A-levels and applying to unis, being told to not apply to so many Russell groups – to put a few safety options just in case, we’re just looking out for you. It was always aim high but not too high – that wasn’t consistent with everybody. So I would say those were the first times I was like, what’s going on here? It doesn’t have to be necessarily somebody being aggressive or outright hateful…”
“I worked at that company when I first came to the UK. I’m from the Caribbean and I came into a different culture – in those days, you would sit in the canteen, for example, and you’d hear people talking. And the way some people talked was quite surprising. Most of the people that I was dealing with, they were of a different pigmentation than I was, and to hear people speaking of people that were of a slightly darker pigment in derogatory terms was really, really concerning. And I did, in those early years, begin to think, aren’t all people valuable? Why do some people speak of others as if to say they’re sort of subhuman? I just could not get over that. And I tell you the reason why, where I’m from in the Caribbean we always hold people in very high esteem regardless of where you’re from. So it was quite surprising to hear. Like if someone, a person born here and was of a different pigment was talking about someone born in the Caribbean, they would talk about them as if to say they weren’t real people, which was very, very disconcerting and surprising to me.”
“In the congregations that I have been involved in, the majority of those who belong to them are like me. And you will get someone else who is not specifically like me, who is of a fairer pigment, and they would want to stay for a certain time but then you sometimes find that they move on very quickly. I could be wrong, I don’t think I am, but I could be wrong, but I feel that maybe they don’t want to be led by certain type of people. Some are absolutely wonderful people, some are not so wonderful people, and some are downright rude people.”
“I always, I mean it’s probably pretty clear, but I always wonder what makes them just act so impulsively, especially in that type of way and be like, I need to grab this person and ask them, what are they doing here? just like to feel so different to act that way to another person really shocks me because how does that happen so fast and why?”
“I think when you’re younger there is there is almost suspicion and particularly with people from certain demographics from certain areas and people who have what I would call some sort of stereotypical views of certain people. For instance when I was young I went to a party, you know when you’re young, you like to have a good time – so you go to go to a party and so we’re in the party just having a good time and all we’re doing is dancing to music – there’s nothing else – and all of a sudden then loads of police raided the party. I mean, they just descend like flies upon something. They just descended and raided the party. Oh, they want to put their hand in your pocket. And I’m telling you, in that place, boys, because I had a lot of young friends who didn’t even smoke, and they put their hand in the pocket and they come up and they said, oh, I found this in your pocket, it’s cannabis. And they just planted it in the pocket. And a lot of youngsters really got sort of criminal records, not because they did anything, but because, I suppose because they were very vulnerable, being brought up in the Caribbean to have this respect and regard for elders and then you come here where it was not the same and you get tarnished because people just wanted to be unpleasant and do these sort of things to you.”
“You hear these stories of your ancestors, and then it’s funny because you come to the UK and the same thing happens. You go to school and you have your qualification and you apply for a job and you’re called for an interview and when you go and they look at you and they go, oh. I went for an interview once and that was just a basic job, you know, they just needed an accounts clerk. And I’d just finished my BTEC and I was just really, really going good. It was some dingy place on top of a shop, but I thought that it would be a start and I could actually build up my confidence there. I went and then, the woman…when I left I was in tears. Because the job was there, but she was just so…. threatened by me and …she actually told me when you’re applying for a job, don’t put all these things that you’ve done in your CV because people will be threatened and they won’t give you the job because of that. And I’m thinking what? But you need to have a qualification so I said are you threatened by me? because I think it was a family business and she just wanted a clerk and she said she liked me and all that kind of stuff but she can’t give me the job, I said why? and I was so angry I thought what you think I’m gonna come here and take over your business? she didn’t say anything. She says, remember don’t put so many things on your CV. I stopped looking for a job after that. I stopped looking out for a job after that. I thought, no way, I’m going back to school and I will be studying, studying, studying until I get a job. Honestly, oh my goodness, I think after that I did so many voluntary works, unbelievable because I was just like, fellow! And imagine me if I have a business and I’m looking for somebody, there’s a person with the qualification you give them a test to do and they pass the test and they’re better than you then you take that person because of course you know that your figures won’t be wrong! But instead… oh my goodness, I was like, what? It’s crazy. I think it’s a threat. And I think what is, is not knowing. And it boils right back down to not knowing the person. So if I don’t know you, you’re threatened by me because of who I am. Regardless, because of maybe my skin color or because of from where I’m from because you don’t know anything about me and that is what is ruining society because people don’t have conversations hardly anymore with anybody, so you just walk on the street and you see someone and it’s like this nonsense going on.”
“Those early days of lots of racism. Oh my god, in those days it was terrible… I was working for this company and I worked in a depot… I’m working with this company and the guy who normally go with the truck was sick so they asked me if I could go and I a cab with a guy and he says, I’ve always wanted to ask this question, you see. And I said, yeah. And he said, when a, if a black man goes to bed and he covers with a white sheet, when he gets up in the morning, does it turn black? Oh my God, I nearly went through, I was standing there, through the floor. I just could not believe what this guy was asking me. So I thought, well, I could answer the question very early, very easily. But the way I was brought up was that you always have deep respect for elderly people. Because I think the, the question would be, well, put it around the other way, you get the answer if a white man goes to bed and he covers with a black sheet when he gets up, would it be black? I mean, you answer your own question. But I thought, I just looked at him in so total despair and I just said, no, he doesn’t. It doesn’t. People used to be so racist. It was terrible. It was just unbelievable, some of the things you would go against. It was almost as if one set of people was superior to another set of people, and I never understand why.”
“I think if I was to think about the way that I’ve seen my generation go about things, and even generations or years before mine, was sort of, we’d have a bit more extra steps or maybe like being taught to be quiet and just sort of firm things in silence and then it becomes a point where we can’t handle that because we’ve been in a society that has been encouraged us to be active in whatever we want to do and so instead of it being from silence to anger which has transpired in maybe violent protests and that sort of thing and then sort of progression into the sort of respect for correction in that sense and I think I’ve definitely gone through those and I still would say that I still have that, not as much anymore but lingers of that sort of anger and frustration, especially with racial discrimination, and I have that intersectionality of being a black woman as well so that is just a double whammy in itself but I think for me the more present thing is being black and the treatment I receive from that and so I haven’t gone about things in sort of the three-step process I mentioned but I can definitely see other people around me in that, around my age as well have gone through that and it’s the society and the way we’ve been brought up that means that we’ve had so much control and resistance and expressing ourselves that we’ve actually just done the opposite in the experience just completely gone about it and just been all guns blazing.”
“It is still happening there is no denial about it I mean I have I have even experienced like I am working in an office where initially, when I used to go to the sites, the contractor or even the client won’t look at me, won’t communicate with me. I’m the only girl in ten men on a table. They want nothing. But then slowly, now, they ask for my name, they ask for me. Okay, can she come? Can she manage it? It’s like, why is it normal? Why is that normal that if there are like ten men and one woman, they will all be very self-reliant? No. Because of my colour, if I was a white woman, would it have happened? No. Then people would call things out. But just because I’m brown, it happened. It is happening.”
“There’s a lot of trauma that is around for elder people, people in their 80s, their late 80s going into 90s. they have been suffering from trauma and they don’t know how to deal with it. So they are very, very angry. The simple thing they will just fly off their hands because of what they experienced when they came into this country. I think a lot of these people probably die without even understanding even the depth of the trauma that because some don’t realise and recognise that they are going through a trauma, that they are suffering from it. And as I say, some of them because they can’t talk about it. They don’t know how to talk about it. And that is where the problem is because a lot of that has been projected on their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. So that also divides the family. sometimes if you’re literally, you cannot pinpoint if you’re not like what we’re doing now and getting to the root, into the depth of it, is that if you don’t understand, and you’re not privileged to read the material and see what is going on, and to bring all of that trauma to the front, work on it and get some form of peace, then it’s not gonna happen. They’re gonna die traumatized or holding on to something that could have easily well be dealt with.”
“When I came here, what I saw was the sort of separation between, say, people from my culture and the indigenous population. There was always this thing, this sort of superiority complex, if I might put it that way. So people like me that was coming from the Caribbean were looked down on as inferior. And this really got me. And it’s quite strange, but I remember a young woman came to my classroom. She was a mathematician and she was from the Caribbean and she qualified in the University of the West Indies. And she came here, it was a girls’ school, I remember very well, and they wouldn’t have her teach because they said that her degree was of less value than if she had obtained a degree in a British University. And it really strikes me as interesting because the level of mathematics that we do in the Caribbean, I always feel it’s a much of a higher level that’s taught in secondary schools there. And I couldn’t understand why this sort of superiority thing exists. So I used to find that I’d get quite annoyed. Yes, I used to get really annoyed. And I need to control my emotions because I get a little bit mad about people doing that, thinking that because you’re from a certain culture you’re better.”
“A science teacher that we had in secondary school, literally told us a story about how she got a degree from Greece, where she was going to be an eye doctor. But the degree wasn’t worthy here, so she became a biology teacher instead. I remember her so vividly because she kept talking about how she wanted to be a doctor but couldn’t. And I don’t even think it’s even a race situation. It’s more like anyone outside of Britain is looked down on. Because she was white. You could tell that she wasn’t from the UK, but she was white. But they still didn’t accept her degree, which was actually really upsetting, because she knew a lot about biology. And she was a good teacher.”
“I can see that it’s not just from people from the Caribbean that that used to happen to probably… it is this this sense of superiority, this sense of ascendancy, this sense of ‘being better than’, and I wonder, where does that come from? Why don’t you value people as people? – regardless of where you’re from. Because what you do have in every nation, this is my experience in life, you have good people, absolutely wonderful people. I mean, some of the nicest people that I ever met are English people. And some that are really not nice. Really nasty. And if you go to the Caribbean you get the very same thing. Some people are pleasant and kind and thoughtful and some are just grr! And probably in your culture the same sort of thing exists. You know, people are people.”
“Often we don’t know the reasons behind a lot of these things. I mean, I always put it down to just greed, really. It’s just by greed you manipulate everybody. You want people to work but they’re not in proper housing, they’re not being taken care of properly and they’re not given proper wages. So you’ll just subjugate them and you’ll suppress them and they work from morning to night and early hours of the morning. and at the end of the week or so, there’s no money. So it’s something that we should all take a stock of and look at, why did these things happen? Why should we put up with them or why should we be, or for parents or parents and grandparents, why should they be suffering this trauma now? Because I know there’s loads of older people, 80 or 90 years old, women and men who were invited from the Caribbean to this country to work and they died full of trauma that’s never resolved, they’ve never shared their stories, they’ve never told people how they felt, the things that they’ve been through when they came here. I asked my mum and asked other people and things that they’ve been through and realised that oh my goodness and the question I asked why didn’t you just go back home? But it’s funny because there’s a man, he said we all came here for five years, and when 10 years passed, we didn’t even have half our air fair to go back. – then you meet somebody, you start making a family or whatever… So instead of coming for five or for ten years and work and do something, go back home and have your family, you end up staying 40-50 years. It’s like the benefit trap – you become trapped. You’re definitely trapped – definitely trapped – and instead of making you feel as if you’re a human being you’re treated like nothing – like a dog – the dog and Irish and blacks are in the same category.”
“When I came here at the age of 11 and went to a school just up the road from here, very prestigious private school here for high achievers. This was a dream come true for my family, who very much uphold education as a pathway to success and accomplishment and to, we’d always hear our elders say, we’re doing this because we don’t want it to be the same for you. But I began to understand what it was like to be an other, to be othered, to not feel as if I was seen or held or understood in a space. So you can imagine in those years where you’re shaping your identity as a young person, I didn’t have that language at the time in any way. I began to do my own soul searching and also because we work in international development as a family between generations, we would move a lot, we’d be going back and forth to the Caribbean, via the States, you know, wherever our family is. And I remember, I must have been maybe 14, 15, and we were in Jamaica and my aunt was taking us to this school, which is a vestige of colonialism, but it’s also heralded as a tourist site. And I remember that age being quite distraught and asking why this would be on our agenda. And I was told, well, you know, it’s one of the tourist sites. I’m like, but why would I come here? Because at that early stage I could already feel that there was, this was a problematic space for me.”
“So, it hasn’t gone away, it takes different shapes and forms. It’s complex. And in that complexity, there are so many nuances which are difficult to discern and distinguish. So, if I look at my oldest son, who was 9 when he came here, and he went through his secondary schooling years here and literally from week one he was bullied, he was called nigger, he was you know. And I saw this child who was very confident, very comfortable and very happy, he had a strong sense of family and personhood withdraw and become more and more internally focused and his bullying experiences happened once and I said okay what happens they go through a process at school where they call in the and the person who they see as the victim. One meeting with each, meeting with the parents, and then within a matter of three days bringing the two together and say, right, okay, Vishay can make friends and we put that one in the file and we carry on with life. And so when I saw this, I could see that this is absolutely not going to address the real issue of racism and institutionalized racism within the education system. But then, now when you’re talking with the children, where are those attitudes and beliefs coming from? They are coming from somewhere. Their home is typically a place where such attitudes are noticed. And practiced. And so if we are not able to… So a five-step process will never create a space where my son feels safe. It will rarely shift that child who feels that it’s okay to call my son nigger and to bully him because of his colour. It will rarely shift anything that he believes. Yes. anything that he believes, yes. And I would have these conversations with my children. It happened again six months later in my experience. I wrote a very long letter to the school to say this is not acceptable. And it led me to ask many questions. How many other instances of racism are we experiencing? What other policies do they have in place because what they are doing is not effective.”
“They could get jobs, because there were so many jobs available, that they would start one this morning and they were treated badly or they didn’t like it, and by lunchtime they could walk into another one. So those days there was nothing much that they were renting these rooms and maybe you have one room, a big room like this and they probably split it up in like six. So six different people were sharing the one room with maybe just curtains or a piece of wood separating them. They used the same bathroom, they used the same kitchen and they had signs. No blacks, no Irish, no dogs. Those were the signs that they had. So if you do, as a black person, you do find a place to rent, and the condition would be horrible. And the owners would just walk in sometimes, you may be cooking or whatever you’re in the room that you’re in, and they would just open their door and walk in. So there was no privacy, there was no respect, but based on that, they were treated like, really horrible at work, and especially if you’re working at hospitals and so their people were treated very, very badly. But they didn’t complain either, because the majority of these people they left home because they wanted to make a new life. So as far as they’re concerned they’re earning and a lot of them put up with it, a lot of them didn’t, but especially the women, they just go along with it. Really, really terrible. So, I had a conversation once and I said, so why didn’t you just go back home? Not that some of them didn’t want to, but they couldn’t afford a fare either. They could not pay for the airline ticket.”
“She said the amount of trainers that they’ve taken off her feet, you know, and she don’t carry her bag to school because every time she takes her bag they search, they take her money, so she don’t. So she’s been going home without trainers, and sometimes without the coat, because they just take that. Is it because, is the bullying, are you saying the bullying is because of the skin color? Yes, a lot of them is the skin color.”
“Even going to school here in the UK, I think we went to quite a diverse school, but even it felt very segregated. People had their own spaces, their own communities or people that they would converse with and it was like you couldn’t really go and talk even though everyone’s human – we’re all people and in the same environment – but it’s like this weird tension that doesn’t really need to be there because we’re just all in school but it’s there just because of this segregation that’s brought up in us. It’s a weird experience, especially in a diverse place. I guess sometimes a lot of people tend to segregate themselves without even realising it. Like in our school, it wasn’t like people decided that this is where certain people were going to sit, but they ended up moving to those locations anyway. Like, I vividly remember when I was in secondary, there was a specific group of people from just purely Somali culture, and they would all sit together collectively and they would actively avoid other people, and I did not want to sit there. So I kind of made it my mission to not be one of those people purely because there wasn’t really, in my opinion, any point in going to a diverse school if you weren’t going to mix with other people.”
“Our mosque is very multicultural – you have a lot of people there – but there’s always a majority. We’re from West Somalia, and a lot of Somali African people will congregate at that mosque. And especially now during Ramadan or Eid, you’re gonna find a lot of those people there. It’s not to say that it’s rare that you’ll find fairer people there, but it’s way less often. And it’s mainly because a lot of the elders will go to that same mosque as well. You’ll find that they’re not really gonna discriminate against one another, but they’re not exactly gonna sit in the same line to pray. … So they will sit and listen to the talk on a Friday. And they’ll sit and they’ll pray and they’ll leave. But there’s no guarantee they’re always gonna be on good terms. And that might eventually pass down to their children and their grandchildren. Even now, you’ll see it happen. I think the only time that it doesn’t apply, I could be wrong, will probably be on Eid, when everyone’s celebrating after a whole month of fasting. Because everyone’s already enjoying themselves and eating food and having a great time. So I feel like that might be the only time where that doesn’t apply. … It’s a weird experience because we sit in lines in the mosque, and everyone will sit with their family, and even though we’re sitting next to each other – we’ll be shoulder to shoulder sitting on the floor – it still feels like it’s quite segregated, like there’s boxes of different communities, instead of everyone just being in one space to pray to one God. Now that I think about it actually, it’s quite weird, because there’s someone else, just another person, sitting next to you but because we’re from different cultures, there’s this weird tension and like oh I can’t really talk to this person, I can only talk to my own community because of how it’s structured or how it’s always been in the mosque. This dialogue process made me realise it. We haven’t really noticed it before because a lot of people from our culture live around the same area as us. So you’ll see the mosque packed full of people that either we know, or we’re related to, or we’ve heard of. Loads of people who don’t actually know each other could all be speaking the same language, trying to sort out the same situation. But you don’t notice that there’s any discrimination unless someone else is involved in it. So once that happens, you’re sitting there praying all to the same God, but you’re just like, there’s some unspoken rule not to talk to this person for some reason. And this sort of behavior then gets passed down from generation to generation. I was talking about this to my mum the other day, because I wonder if our culture kind of breeds this idea that we’re not supposed to converse with anyone from any other culture. And tribalism makes that even worse. So when, in our own houses, we talk about other people there’s these labels and names that really shouldn’t be said and that is just passed down to your children. And so when we like try and go out into the world or even go to our own Mosques or wherever places we congregate or come together in there’s always going to be this tension or like this idea that oh, this is what I’ve heard about you instead of can I get to know this person? I want to get to know this person just because they look different to me and I want to just get to know them. I feel like our culture kind of breeds this segregation, even though we’re all part of different minorities.”
“There are households in this country and areas that I could never walk in. Because it’s not allowed. You couldn’t walk in certain areas. And I remember when I went to the Lake District some years ago and I was well scared, really, really scared. I went to Keswick and it was a wonderful experience because I was at Lakeside, sitting on a bench and looking over on the lake and just meditating. And then a couple came up, funny enough they were from London, but they decided to talk to me. And we had a really good conversation. And the next day I went back on the lakeside and I saw one other black guy. And he was actually working there. So we had a conversation and I said, I‘m feeling a bit nervous being here on my own. I don’t know what to expect, but he says, no, it’s okay. He said he’d never had any problem. He came there at one of the conventions and he liked the place and he went back, resigned his work, and he looked for a job down there and got a job. So, on my first night, I went to the WI, the lady I was staying with took me to the Women’s Institute. I’d heard about them, but I’d never seen them. They were such a lovely bunch of people. But I still had that fear within me that, you know, they might be just putting on this facade. … I didn’t really feel as if I was gonna be hurt, you know, but it’s a different kind of fear. There’s another fear that when I’m at certain places or going to certain places, I’m thinking, oh God, I’m in it now. But hopefully that will never happen But fear is a dangerous thing – it is a dangerous thing. And it’s fear of the unknown. You don’t know if the other person is going to do something you don’t know what is going to happen. You might even be fearful that the person might say hello! You know, you don’t want to say hello and the person says hello, how do I respond if I’m not really into that people and so on. And it might stump you, it might cause you to do something. Why are you saying hello to me? and all that kind of stuff. But it’s that sort of fear. And if we can get over that fear and look at people as humans that we are, it will be a different world. It’s not going to happen overnight that everything is going to be nice. Because this generation is in some serious trouble.”
“What I’ve understood is your generation was especially, and I see that even in how my parents behave, is sort of you may be told to just young people to affirm it yeah right we’ll just deal with it and maybe deal with it in silence let’s not make a big thing of these things and whatever capacity it could be discrimination by racism misogyny ageism whatever it might be it was kind of just deal with in silence and get on with your life and then you both sort of, and I think a lot of people in your generation, sort of grew to know your sort of importance and your worth in society and therefore speak out in a respectful way, so you’re still paying homage to the way you were brought up.”
“I remember like on a certain, on an occasion with one of my granduncles, he lived in this country and he came back home, very very bright, he was a statistician, that man deals with figures, but it was quite difficult because of his complexion as well. And so I always wonder why certain people were getting jobs. And it’s as if the jobs were kind of centralised. There are certain jobs that these people were getting their jobs at. And there were some people that were mainly in the post office, and some were mainly in the banks. And you would know who would go to the post office. The banks are the ones that would be out there and facing the public. But the post office or other areas. It didn’t dawn on me that much that there was something so deep at that time, that there was something so deep that was happening, because it’s as if people just accepted what was happening, as if they accepted it. But the older folks, you might hear them talk about, it’s as if we’re still in slavery on certain occasions when something happens, and they will say it’s like, it seems as if we’re still in slavery because this is still happening, or that is still happening. But apart from that, most of it, people just accepted it. They just accepted it.”
“I’m from Bangladesh, you know, so coming here, I was told, I was aware that it would be racism and because of my skin I would face it. So I was open, open and I was accepting it. It’s normal, it’s normal that it’s going to happen but then until or unless I was in that situation I did not understand the depth of it. So I went on a survey in a particular place and I was the only person in my color. And I noticed how people were coming out of their houses to see what I’m doing on a piece of paper. So it’s just so strange that we have come so far. And we are in like 2023 and still yet we look twice at a person and with a different color we still discriminate it’s just I think that’s why we’re working on this kind of a project so people know what has actually happened and the depth of it not just more or Less everyone knows what has happened but the depth of how much there was suffering, the discrimination, the racism and the trauma.”
“The other thing that I noticed was how you have the cellar in this country, the basement flat, the cellars, and how it has become another part of another flat or another room to rent. But initially, this were designed to actually keep the slaves or the maids or whoever down so there’s no sunlight, there’s nothing that is the darkest place. It is just so bizarre that this person who is working for you, with you at times, and you are literally housing them in a place where there’s no sunshine. Well, I think that’s really where the suppression comes in. In some countries, if you have that, that’s where your animals are. So that is the extent. And as you mentioned that, that was like, it is even kind of going even deeper in me to think that that was really, really horrible. And it reminds me now also, as the hold of the ship. Let us say, so perhaps like sardines, the worst part of it. So it’s a mentality is that you’re keeping someone down. It’s as if there is this line somewhere and this particular group of people will always be below that line.”
“I came to the UK in the March it was – it was very cold and by April I was having a cough, you know, coming from the sunshine. So I went to the doctor’s surgery. It was full of people. So I went to the doctor’s surgery, and coming from the Caribbean, I said, good evening, and no one responded. I mean, nobody. I didn’t realise that you don’t greet people if you don’t know them and I felt that day I sank under the floorboards, I tell you and it’s only when I went home and my mother said you shouldn’t have done that you know it’s not like it’s not like when you were back home you know where you greet everyone it’s different now so I learned that suddenly I was in a different culture completely. Where respect and regard wasn’t held in such high esteem as we did in the Caribbean.”
“I came to England in the 60s and had the shock of my life. Because I remember hearing this boy and when his mother called him and he said, WHAAAT! And I couldn’t deal with that. Because you never ever speak to your mother like that… I went to the doctor because I got sick and I went to the doctor’s surgery which was full of people and then, I greeted the whole surgery I said good evening and no one responded. It was such a shock. I felt oh my god they don’t talk here. In Jamaica everybody talks you know and so it was a real culture shock when I leave the Caribbean and came here and then it’s cold. I felt so embarrassed. I suppose had I known that you don’t greet people that you don’t know, I wouldn’t have done it. But being accustomed to this mode of behaviour, I just carried it through. And I suppose in a sense I was thinking I’m still in Jamaica, which I wasn’t. You know, I was in a different country with my Jamaican practices and culture, cultural behaviours, you know.”
“Putin said that Africa is a graveyard. Its people – they educate themselves elsewhere, they make families elsewhere, they live elsewhere. The only reason they ever go back is when they die to be buried there. It’s a harsh reality, and as terrible as that is, coming from him, you definitely see it’s because of how we’ve been conditioned to think that the West is better. And this is the issue that I have with that statement, is there’s no acknowledgement of, even if that is true – which it isn’t because there are lots of Africans who are very loyal to their continent and loyal to their countries that make up that continent – there’s no acknowledgement of the brainwashing and the hands of Europe primarily in making Africa that way.”
“I think it’s interesting to hear you say it because like being a diaspora and having being from a country like Nigeria that has very similar sort of traditions and qualities in regards to like the hierarchy between children and elders and that sort of thing, just it’s like you’re in two worlds because I’m British born so I’m encouraged to sort of behave like maybe that boy that you had seen in that occasion but at home it’s like you were never raised to behave like that. So even to be educated in a system that quite frankly encourages young people to be kind of outwardly like, you know, what is the inline response? And then have to and still have to carry out your respect that you’ve gained from your family is very confusing and you kind of have to build your own sort of, it kind of creates this own entitlement where it’s like, but I’m Nigerian but I’m British so it’s kind of a weird sort of outlook on things. I think my mum has sort of understood that she’s Nigerian in the UK But she has sort of made an effort to accustom her practices to the UK Whereas I think my dad is quite a proud Nigerian, where he’s like Wherever I go, I’m Nigerian, so my practices will follow me and that sort of impacted the internal conflict I’ve had being British growing up in a Nigerian household and trying to balance both worlds to find the middle, especially because both my parents weren’t exactly on the same page of whether they were going to be completely accustomed or accustomed at all.”
“I know someone from Zanzibar, who has a passion for engineering and a passion for international development. Now that is an interesting combination. She’s not just building or designing bridges anywhere, she’s really interested in how you can build infrastructure in Africa that can help alleviate poverty, for example. So she’s blended the two. As someone who always looks to passion first – I’m talking about myself now – I always work with passion first. Sometimes it means that during my life I haven’t earned the highest salary that I could have, but for me money is not everything. I’ve always shared this with my children, start with what you’re passionate about, the rest will follow. And so I share that as an opening to say that I’m here because of passion.”
“I would say my life has played to what I am today because of being myself and just being focused on what I want to achieve in life but not what people tell me to do. I would listen to people but the final say of what I need to do really lies on me. And so I would take what I find is valuable in what people are telling me, and I think that is what has been able to carry me all along.”
“I remember my father being very clear: Embrace all cultures. Everyone has something valuable to share. And so do you. And I felt no sense of separation in that context. When I came here at the age of 11.”
“I used to go around with a group of young black boys, and then we would talk about our own experiences. And some of the experience that I have, somebody else would have it, and then we would just talk about it. And, you know, it really helped us because you’re gonna meet on a Saturday evening, and you’re gonna talk about it. So you sort of offload on each other and someone would say a word. I remember my friend saying, well, you’ve got to understand that a hundred children won’t play together for a hundred years. I don’t know what he was saying. He was saying, that guy that’s so rude to you, he’s gonna pass on one day and you won’t have the same thing every time. And I think if you didn’t have people whom you could offload things to, I think you could really go mental because you’re made to think that you’re not human.”
“That’s one of the reasons why they have associations that they set up for different countries. There was one association in Jamaica that I joined when I came here. And that was basically to kind of help people where housing is concerned and kind of signpost them to a lot of help that they could get as well. And they would have a place that they could socialise and that way it kind of made them feel a bit better because you had like the men would play their dominoes, their cooking and what have you. But it was an outlet for them. So those are some of the things I think that kept them going. And they loved dancing. So they would have their little, if somebody has like a house in their basement or something, a room in the basement, they would go to the basement. So they would have like a Friday or Saturday, they would go dancing and that, they kept their sanity. So that was one of the things, and that is coming back from when we would go to parties or dances every weekend. So that helped them in a way that probably numbed them from not thinking about all the stuff that they’re putting up with on the street.”
“I think it’s quite a difficult situation, and it’s about timing as well, because if young people are actually in the midst of what is happening, then you can’t just jump into a conversation with them to say, this is it, and this is how you should behave and what I feel. How I would approach that is just not even in a big setting, so you maybe just meet with one or two people and find out how are things, you know, how is person, how is school, how are things on the street, are you comfortable, are you streetwise, how do you feel about the street?”
“I grew up as a church goer…And I think, you know, my sense, we talk, we always go to Sunday school, we learn, we learn about forgiveness and patience and all that. And I learn to forgive people. And I just said, well, he speaks like that because he’s uninformed. You know, he’s ignorant. And you cannot hold things forever because, you know, it’s like locking yourself behind bars. I just said yeah he did that out of ignorance. I think I found a lot of [healing and peace] through prayer…. Church was really a place that you sort of release all your pent up feelings of what you were, because you always have the, they call them the mothers, the matriarchs and the patriarchs and the dads, you know, really encouraging and strong”
“I tell you one of the things – when I was young – you would be driving down the road in a little old jalopy car, because in those days you hardly could afford anything. My car used to break down and you’d get these police people that would stop you. You’d say why is he stopping me? But I tell you what was annoying for me is the way I would want to say, God, I’ll show my impatience. Now I don’t get police people stopping me, hardly – I think it’s my senior years. So, then about two years ago, when it snowed very hard and I didn’t clean all the snow off the back of the car, the police stopped me. And I was suited and booted and strapped in, and he looked at me and he said good morning sir! I thought that’s unusual because that never used to happen before. So I think also as you grow older, you mature in age and you react differently to things. Maybe 30 years down the road I would react a certain way and I’m generally just gentile, just kind. So if I’m pulled over by an officer for example I’d say can I help you officer? because that’s what I said to him I said can I help you? and he said to me oh I noticed that you can’t see out of the window. I said I didn’t notice that I can’t see out of the window. – Oh I noticed that you didn’t clean all the snow. I says well the area for me to see is cleaned and as I’m going along the snow is dropping off anyway and then he started this conversation. It was a strange conversation. He says oh I noticed that you’re driving without a license. I said you have noticed that? I said I’ve never driven without a license. Where have you noticed that and then he says to me oh you seem very confident I said I’m absolutely confident because I’ve never driven without a license in my life and then I said can I make a suggestion officer would you care to check that you’re seeing the right information. I think he was just trying to see if I was going to blow hot and cold … it’s a way of… but I don’t fall for those sort of things – I just will not fall for it but I realize that’s a way to wind people up so I would say now that I’m older, I do approach things quite differently. And I generally find if you are pleasant and you are cooperative, then there tends to be a different sort of behavior from people like the police, especially the more mature members of the police. The youngsters, they’re a little bit impatient and a little bit problematic. …if you can perceive what is it that they’re after. Why are they approaching me like this? And you can think of a way to make that situation less than what they’re looking for. I’ll give you an example. I was coming from St. Lucia and that particular year I went on my own. I was coming back and I came to the airport and I had my briefcase and it’s so many people coming through. And this guy just came and he pulled me out. I’m thinking, why is he pulling just me out? There’s so many people. And he says, Oh, oh, what have you got in your suitcase? I said, clothes. Yeah, that was all I said because I did. And he said, What else have you got? I said, clothes. And he wants to open it. I said, Well, you can as long as you don’t put anything in my suitcase, you can open it if you like – as a matter of fact I can open it for you, because all you’re going to see is clothes, and I say this to you some of them are dirty. And so he just looked me up and down he went sort of from my head down to my toe and then he let me go. And I really felt, why me? Why me?”
“Two years ago and I was standing there waiting to be served because you’ve got to stand there and wait. And then the woman just didn’t serve me and someone else came into the bank and she just went over to him and started serving him. And I just said to her, are you trying to say I was not visible? I was standing here, you saw me. Oh, but I didn’t know you needed to be served – So why did you think I was standing here? and we’re asked to stand over here – you just ignored me didn’t you? In my early days I would not have said anything I would just walk out but now I do say stuff – I let people know how you’re feeling and I think that’s educative – I’m a human being. I’m not a block of wood.”
“My father’s philosophy – he always said – my girls will be better than any boy. So he invested in education. At one point, at different levels at university, he had five of us girls in university, and he was maintaining all of us, financially, even though he was just a regular civil servant.
“Even long before independence, there were people who were coming here to the UK to study at Oxford and Cambridge and all of that. My father himself, as a young man, doing his GCSE while he was working with Greenwich University and Oxford. There were so many people doing long-distance studies from Africa. Because Western education was on a pedestal. …That was your ticket. If you were going to be taken on by the ministries or the different offices. That was the price of entry.”
“When I came here at the age of 11 and went to a very prestigious private school here for high achievers. This was a dream come true for my family, who very much uphold education as a pathway to success and accomplishment and to, we’d always hear our elders say, we’re doing this because we don’t want it to be the same for you.”
“I remember this very clearly – sitting with my grandmother – she was rolling the cocoa. We have a tradition of drying raw cacao into a stick – there’s a whole process where they get the pulp and they dry it out in the Sun and then come back and … I remember sitting with her – I loved drinking it – and I remember saying, Grandma, how do you make this? And I wrote about this. So now as somebody who focuses on culture and cultural transformation, that is a cultural practice, yes. So cocoa tea, as we call it in the Caribbean, this stick that you get that’s full of spices- everybody mixes their own kind of spices and you boil it with milk – just the thought of that is, it evokes so many emotions for me, you know, that feeling… smelling it on the pot, you don’t just pour water, you boil it, … it’s a whole process.”
“When had some Somali friends and they would always say come for tea. In the Senegalese tradition, what they call the Ataya, it’s how you pour the tea, get the froth and there’s a folklore that says you must stay for three days, serve it in very small glasses… The ritual every afternoon we’d go there – because it’s really hot – it’s so refreshing to have this tea in that kind of climate as well. Normally you go to somebody’s house and you just say, oh come, let’s have tea – it’s actually a mandate tradition all the way across West Africa, right? And it’s used for bringing people together. There’s a folklore that says you have to have three of these small glasses. Imagine firstly it’s on one small little charcoal – it’s a tiny pot – it’s intentionally like that – you don’t just make a big one. And then there’s the whole ceremony of pouring, it’s so beautiful and then you drink and then it’s all shared – then they’ll share it around again and if it’s not enough then you have to boil it again. So what will happen in that time – you’re not leaving for at least an hour and a half or the folklore is saying you’re going to bring bad luck on the house. My interpretation of that is this is what bonds us in community – these acts and these practices is what bonds us. There is trauma that I feel around the fact that we are losing those practices. You know, I see my children and they don’t, they’re not interested because we’re in this diasporic space where we are navigating and the dominant culture is not of our own. So as a parent I have my own experiences, and as my children they have their own experiences, and my parents, you know, so this intergenerational navigation, that is a continual inquiry, I feel, but also a continual invitation for us to, with consciousness, decide in my house that Ceremony is important.”
“Somali tea – it’s a big thing for us too. It’s a whole thing. It’s more, it’s not just tea, it’s an offering of friendship. It’s a way to open up little communities within your home. It’s like a mediator in difficult conversations. It’s like a thing that people turn to. The Somali one is very milky and it was very sweet.”
“So many questions that I’ve struggled with surrounding identity, surrounding belonging, are rooted in this fear that in this world we value what’s rare, we value things that feel scarce, and yet the scarceness of Somali people and the rarity of Somali people in the UK is what makes me feel like I will always be kind of second best. And so being empowered in the sense of being like reminded by my mom let’s practice this, let’s do this, that I’m not a minority. It’s like every time my mom says, let’s make shah, let’s make this food, let’s do this, let’s go here, let’s visit your grandma, who’s gonna force you to speak in only Somali because she doesn’t speak English very well. You go from being like, oh, you just don’t get what it’s like to grow up in this country and to be in between two cultures, to kind of realizing that she does get it, and that’s why she’s trying to keep you rooted in a culture that will always embrace you. And I think like that’s why spaces like the spaces we’re creating today are so important because for so long I felt kind of a, not resentment but an anger in the sense of like you don’t get it, you don’t understand – to my family. My mum’s family – they left right before the civil war in Somalia and they came here in search of education, in search of a better life to provide for my grandparents and by the time they touched down here there was no going back, there was nothing to go back to. So they didn’t even get to, when they were leaving, be like, I’m not going to be back for a long time. And so growing up raised by aunties and uncles who spent the better part of their youth, whatever that means, or coming of age stories in Somalia was kind of always a bit, there was a disconnect siblings and my cousins and I and all of us were all really close of like yeah we’re Somali but we’re British, like if we go back there they’re gonna make fun of us because we don’t know how to speak Somali, we don’t know how to do this as well, we don’t get this, we don’t get the colloquial kind of culture of the area we’re from even because it’s so different, there’s tribes and Somali culture is so rich and what we weren’t maybe seeing was that our parents were trying to keep us rooted in it because they knew that acceptance would be found in the culture that we’re born from.”
“I insist on cultural practices, calling each other aunt, you know, the elders auntie, like you were saying just now. These are things that they may not recognize now as anchors which can help them shape their identity, but when they are amongst others, they know who they are. And when we go home, be it here, see the family homes, or we have family gatherings, or we all go for funerals, or wherever there are big cultural rites of passage, ceremonies and celebrations, they know more of who they are. But I’ve made a very conscious effort to ensure that they’re exposed to this. Whether they’re receiving it now, I trust. I have to trust that something is going in. So my response would be in short, a conversation is,I don’t think it’s necessarily the start of the process, but it’s a part of a multi-dimensional, uh, I want to say, a multi-dimensional journey which for me as a parent needs to be very intentional, very consciously curated so that they are exposed to experiences so that they can really help shape their identity and to also create the spaces for those [difficult] questions to be asked.”
“I took on a mission to discover Africa, work with Africans, so that we respond to our issues our way. Grassroots. Find African solutions to African problems. Not saying that there wasn’t a meddling from the Europeans, but let’s do what we have to do as responsible people for our continent. Because we are in charge of that. This is your home. Make your bed as you want to lie on it. Deal with that corruption. Talk to one another. Discover the beauty of your continent. Take pride in who you are.”
“We go and visit cultural institutions and see exhibitions and have conversations. When they were younger they were cool with that. Now they’re not pleased. They don’t want to go to museums. But there’s an intergenerational tracing of retracing the footsteps that your father took, that your grandfather took, you know. So when my dad will sit down and tell us stories about, oh when we were going to school we used to walk with no shoes, or when we were able, we could afford shoes in nine children, you know, ten I think. When we could afford shoes, you had one shoes for the whole year. My intention is to take my children, God willing my parents be like. To walk those footsteps with them, to get a visceral, embodied understanding of what my father’s talking about. Because right now they’re just stories, you know, that they all hear. And it is my hope that that will then ignite an awareness within them that can help them choose which path they take.”
“When they travelled, they travelled with just few odd bits of cloth with them and that’s it. And so it’s so important for the elders to express and to explain why they’re still holding on to those memories. Definitely they were there are good memories, like Africans have enriched culture, cultural background, it’s beautiful, it’s colourful, it’s full of like music and colours. But there are things to cherish, but also there are like the other side of the coin, which needs to be shared with the young people.”
“When I began to look outside Africa, I saw… there are policies in the world that are fundamentally so wrong and evil. It’s a systemic thing. Our African countries have our independence – but we are not independent. There is some invisible hand, like when you have those puppet shows. I don’t believe colonialism is over. Slavery is not over. Neo-colonialism is very real and Europe’s hands in Africa’s pockets is very, very real. Exploitation of Africa’s resources is very, very real to the point where I just feel like interpersonal racism isn’t what’s scary to me. If somebody is racist to you interpersonally you can identify it, but the fact that hundreds of thousands millions of people’s life chances are impacted by systemic racism is far more scary to me. And they will go their whole lives without realizing that. So we have to take responsibility for our resources, to fight for our resources and to ensure that the exploitation stops – that is our responsibility to fight for. But you can’t fight the outside unless we all inside [Africa] can come up with something and be in agreement together. It’s a lifetime battle that needs everybody. Some of us have done it in this way. You, the younger ones coming up, will continue and not give up. Being Africans, born and bred here in the UK, you have a duty to our country, our countries. So either as an internationalist you can serve in bodies that serve the whole continent or specifically in your country. The former Minister of Finance in Nigeria, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, she worked with the World Trade Organization, Geneva. She worked with IMF and World Bank for years as the top director. IMF is enemy number one as well. And she took sabbatical to come and serve as a minister of finance in Nigeria, and she cleaned up the system. Saved up so much money for the country. Of course they squandered it afterwards. But she did so much in her four-year term. She did so much. So those are the kind of Africans I’m talking about. Benefit of being a diaspora, benefit of being qualified in your game and bringing it back to the country. Those are the kind of Africans that I want to interact with. And we need more. Take it as a life’s mission. Africa will not change unless we do it. It won’t change. And it doesn’t matter the field – the arts, media, legal, policy, one empire, policy, banking, whatever. You name it, it has to be a mission.”
“We need those who will engage intelligently. I think what the world is lacking is voices with both honor and bravery. You know the Mandelas of life? They are very few and far between. The Desmond Tutus of life, very few and far. Look at the likes of whoever the president are, or prime ministers are. I say look, I know you are a politician, you’ve got to protect yourself and your economy, for example, using the terminology or the phrase, to ask an anemic person to donate blood. The person is anemic, at the point of death, and you’re asking them to donate blood. Now, let’s bring it to trade. The policies guiding world trade are designed by the same principles that govern slavery and colonialism. So you labour, a farmer would labour and labour and work and work and work, grow cocoa for example, or grow whatever they have to grow. And they are not in charge of fixing the prices. The middlemen come and they make their money and the farmer gets nothing. He cannot adequately train his children in school. Those that use his product are in profit day in day out. Because of the same principle. The same principle that governed slavery is still in our world trade, at the center of our world trade today. I think wherever you have capitalism, you have exploitation. The reason why the UK and many Western countries can continue, well one of the reasons, it can continue to exploit the global South is because of these policies that were founded from people who fundamentally – if you really boil it down – they taught and they believed that black people were lesser. And that is really the message that they’re sending. When you really distill it, it’s horrible. And if you look a politician in the eye and say the politics that you practice, the system that you’re defending, believes that – do you believe that? What would they say? Because they might not consciously believe that, but really, they’re protecting a system that does. And you’ve got to awaken them to their responsibilities.”
“I could very easily get a corporate job and be earning lots of money and be very comfortable. I do come from privilege. I am using what I have been gifted, that my parents, what my parents and my foreparents have sweated, you know, blood and tears for, to change a trajectory and make a contribution in whichever humble way I can.”
“Instead of starting from national level, why don’t we start encouraging young professional Somalis to go into politics from the local government areas. Men and women begin to change little by little and then telling your story with this strategy and it goes up and the more you do, starting from grass roots, you’re not threatening the big daddies and uncles and aunties, and the more people see, the more they will start to see a new story, slowly. It is like a 20-25 year plan. It takes one to stick to their guns, do something that locals, that people in Somalia, in Nigeria, wherever, can see and can believe in. And they can’t do without. And then everyone will fight up. There is no fighting from the top. There’s no me living here my whole life going to be a politician. I will tell you, by the time we start doing that from the grassroots. Everything is grassroots. You will not campaign for yourself a president when the time comes. No, you won’t want to. Because part of our traditional governance system in many African societies, from your age groups, that is where leadership starts.”
“What I see when I go across Africa is there are people who are so content – they have the spirit of contentment, as against capitalism. They are in their tiny little villages, in their huts, with their children running everywhere. They wake up in the morning, cleanliness, sweeping of the compound. Women using mud and cow dung to paint the walls once every month. And then they have the African traditional art, and they decorate their walls and they sit in the evenings and tell stories and that is contentment. I am proud of who I am. They dress in their beads and shawls and everything and they are not looking for Calvin Klein they are not looking for Roger Gucci they are just content. They love, they tell stories of their love.”
“Growing up in Uganda, I just knew the people surrounding us, the community around us, as my relatives. Later when I came to Sudan, before it became South Sudan, I discovered that in that neighborhood they had actually come from different places, far, far, far. But I just knew them like they were my community. Because we were so close, and our parents were also very, very close with them. So, that was that.”
“I grew up with my nan. She’s passed on into eternity now, but she was a wiseacre and they have these little things they would say… – things like – you probably hear this one – Rome wasn’t built in a day. Sometimes we’d want things, and they can’t provide it and we would want it instantly and they said well look, you know, it’s gradually gradually. And I suppose those sort of things get passed down to people like me. There’s a very strange one that my grandmother would say: every animal has their four o’clock. And what she was saying is like, it doesn’t matter where you are at, at the end of the day you will always return home. So you should always take care of your home and have respect and regard for your home and you should not think that other people’s homes or houses are better than yours. Yours is yours and your friend’s is not yours. These things are just drummed into us.”
“I wrote so much when I was a kid, I remember in primary school, when I was 11, the first thing that I ever wrote that was like a big deal was a poem called The Revolution. It was about Nelson Mandela and apartheid and the fight against apartheid. And I remember winning like a little iPod and like this competition. And you get your poem published in a little book and feeling like, wow, expressing my own need to like help my people. And when I say my people, I don’t just mean Somali people, I mean African people, I mean black people. Because I do believe that we have so much connecting us, so much separating us in terms of culture, and I think that those should be preserved specific cultures, but so much connecting us, and I found that writing is one of the best ways to express questions of identity or questions of grievance or loss or trauma or healing.”
“There’s power in the pen. In the UK, our voices are, if not erased, they are muted in the mainstream discourse. And in the senses of power, they’re largely absent… It is changing, but 30 years ago those voices were non-existent.”
“I can use poetry to go really deep within and explore. It helps me as I’m writing poetry, it helps me understand some things that I can’t even yet articulate, and that my logical brain will not provide clarity. So in the poetry, I get these openings of awareness and awakenings. Writing and performance I think is a very interesting one because as a poet, so I also paint and I’m thinking that if I paint and there’s a saying amongst artists, if you have not shared your work, the work is incomplete. Without the gaze of another, the work is incomplete. And that really fascinated me. And it takes courage to come out to the world. But I feel that everybody’s voice has value. How it is heard and where it is heard, how it is packaged, how it’s presented. In this world today, …how can I cut through the noise with my own voice, , but also how can I cut through the noise of everything else to find my own voice? So there’s an interplay and a dynamic interaction and tension with this question, these questions that you’re asking around power, identity formation, for us as race groups that are less seen and less heard.”
“I honestly think I’m most myself when I’m alone, when I’m not speaking, when I’m not performing, when I’m not communicating. And I think that writing is so powerful because when I’m on my own and I’m writing, it is the pen and paper is me and I’m the pen and paper – there’s no separation there in the same way that there is when another person is on the receiving end of whatever I’m saying.”
“Poetry for me then became a deeper expression because I could make it very personal about me.”
I’m an artist. I use my body as a walking museum. My practice is called Evoking Belonging and this is something that I developed through the field of social sculpture but actually it’s all my years working in the international development field mostly across Africa and through this lens I culture, polity and artivism. And so as an artist and an activist, I use my practices to advocate for justice where I see injustices in the world. I see it as mission-focused work. I see that this is an ancestral path that I have been bestowed with gifts and capacities to enable me to sit with grandmothers under the tree and shell peas in the village and sit at the highest levels of authority and governance and still hold a space of trust, inspiration most importantly, and to be able to bring my practices which are imaginative it’s about imagining possibilities you know I work with something I’m very passionate about which is Ubuntu. …So belonging, my work is called Evoking Belonging. It’s a theory, it’s a practice, it’s a number of practices that are oriented within this philosophical anchor of Ubuntu. We are all connected. So if we’re all connected, what does it mean for questions around race and equity? You know, these are the things I explore. How do we shape our identity? So I use my body as an artist, as a walking museum, as a site of inquiry. And so from the way in which I style my hair to the way in which I dress, which changes all the time, it was a way of me being able to reclaim what I feel slavery has really eroded from our cultural imaginary this question of belonging and who is the other because in my expression of being in this body there’s nowhere that I can go my father’s home, my mother’s home, Oxford married in Senegal, I was married in South Africa, I’ve had two husbands, third one is coming. There is nowhere I can go where they’ll say, yes, you belong here. Yes, your father came from here, yes, your mother came from here, but you’re that girl with a British accent who dresses in African clothes and you wear your hair funny and you speak with, …. So there’s always these things that others will project onto you. and so I created to be able to hear to be able to attend to the wounds find the space for them within myself and a very cathartic way as well I find that the work I do is cathartic so in creating that space for others to explore these questions it also is bringing healing to me it also comes with its own traumas because it reopens this thing so I share in many dimensions how I am dealing with this legacy of slavery and as I shared earlier it’s not historic it’s very real for me it’s very real it is historic of course.”
“Wakanda and black panther and all this these very positive expressions of who we could be afro-futurist thinking you know i’m showing black people and African culture in a very glamorous way through Marvel, you know, it’s it’s powerful stuff…. I’m really grateful that we’re living in a time where we have such powerful media platforms where we can see Wakanda, you know, we can hear music that defines us. And not only hear this, but it’s the music that defines who we are as young black urban youth is actually the music that’s out there, that everybody, no matter what their racial group is, might be one but it’s very popular it could take the place of popular music.”
“Another similarity between Latin America and Africa is dance and food. The center of many, many cultural practices is food and dance. Movement, whether that’s, you know, associated with a particular tribe or rhythm or whatever. It doesn’t really matter, to be honest. It’s that sharing of rhythm and of movement.”
“And how we celebrate life, you know, new births, you know, you have a child, or death actually. It’s also how a community sees the transcendence here, between here on earth and beyond.. What we call being alive and beyond. It’s how we rationalize being alive, is through moving and through eating and talking and laughing.”
“Yeah, the rhythm of dance, the drums. The rhythm of life. You know, they say this rhythm of life. I’ve never traveled to Africa, I’ve traveled to Latin America, but these continents are well known, and even many South Asian countries and cultures, that we have this rhythm of life. The colour, it’s multifaceted, it’s multicoloured. And I think, to be honest, when I really reflect, since we’re talking about the slave trade, many of these countries, or the majority of them, have been colonised, or were sort of involved in the slave trade. And sometimes I think, was this a way of surviving? Or sharing? People coming together, having to come together, forced in these positions of coming together, forming communities to find strength in each other, using rhythms, music, food, as a way of spirituality and hope for the future.”
“Talking about resilience, it’s a very, it’s a word, I’m not going to die. You know, like they say about the beetle, try to crush the beetle. Nope, I’m not dying today. Not today, thank you. A lot goes into that. I remember watching some films about the Caribbeans who came to the UK and how they just decided to group together, have a good dance together, just have fun after all the hard work and winter. That’s just survival. Yes. I know it’s tough out there, but for the here and now, let’s have a good dance.. Let’s relax. And then a whole trend started in music. Now everybody’s celebrating Afro.”
“A lot of people in Africa and in the African Diaspora as well, they were religious people and so they use God as their springboard. So they will they go to church, they pray, and they will dance and they make music. That that’s what happened because there there’s one dance, I think it’s the quadrille, that the slaves – they were working in some rich houses and they didn’t have anything left to do – so every night after they finished working, when they finished working and they were tired and didn’t know what to do, they would lock themselves in a room and just dance. I heard the story some time ago and I did look it up. So they use music to make them sane. So they will dance and laugh and carry on and just enjoy themselves. And a couple hours after that they’re going back to be suppressed. You know, so that was what keep them, their sanity. Other people, they set up little house churches for people and they go to church and a lot of them they’ve buried a lot in their gut.”
“Music is a wonderful release and the new tune would come out, you know, you spend your time talking about stuff like that. Those things really helped you.”
“I think there’s an African spirit which, I mean, it’s a continent, so there’s many cultures, many people, many villages, many ways of being. But I think there is, this is something that I really see in Latin America, and I guess they can be attributed, because of the fact that slavery occurred in Latin America as well – the transport, the transatlantic slave traders, it spread all the way to Latin America. And I think because, as Latin Americans, there’s a big gap in people realizing how much of African culture makes us who we are. And because of that history and that spirit, that joy, the laughter you talk about, it’s shared. And it’s so beautiful, it’s so unique. Something I love to see is women, whether it’s African women, Latin American women, they come together and they share. And it’s like, they have an energy between them that’s like sparks. And there’s a sense of joy, a sense of sisterhood. The concept of a sisterhood, making family where you don’t have blood relations. It’s the way I have aunties here and there. I’ve got aunties in Canada. I’ve got aunties in Colombia. This feeling of having family in the women around you, in the men around you, in the best people. I think it creates that. That’s what community feels like to me. And that’s something to be proud of and to hold on to. You know, it’s so special.”
“My friend and his wife, I visited Kenya with them. A few times, they’ve been there many more times before I joined them. And they tell the very funny story of how they were invited to tea by a family. And so they went, they drove to this particular area, tried to locate the man’s house, and when they thought, oh, we’ve arrived, they went in there. And the people received them beautifully and brought tea and granola, bananas, desserts. So the man said, where is Richard? And they said, oh! that’s next door. So meanwhile, the real person is waiting for them next door. It shows you, though. It shows you. So that is like 15, 20 minutes of having such… Can you imagine? Boiling hot water, making tea and chit-chatting and laughing. And they say, so where’s Richard? Richard, Richard, let me take you there. You know that sense of hospitality, it’s unlike any other. You could be a stranger and they’ll say, no, come for dinner.”
“I say to those people Don’t judge me because you don’t know me. And it’s time for you to take a step back or sit down at the table and talk. Get to know me. And what better place to start with like over food? That is, it brings out so much. And I think it’s nice when you have bring and share – so you have different cultures and different ways of cooking. There was a time when I thought, oh I’m not going to eat that. Or I’m not eating from that person, I don’t know that person but then we get to taste it, just a little and you’re like, that’s quite nice. How do you do that? So you start asking questions, how do you prepare that and all that kind of stuff. So this is the same thing about getting to know us, how we get to know the other because I think one of the things also, it’s not always about the other at all times, it’s about us, it’s about me, it’s about you. Because sometimes, because of what we’ve been through or because of what our foreparents or ancestors have been through, we also build something up. So we have that barrier as well.”
“We know that the rates of crime amongst young people, the stabbings, the shootings, the violence, it’s just reaching an all new high. These young people who kind of act out and get involved in really difficult things and choose very traumatic life paths. Because sometimes it’s a choice, and of these choices don’t come from nowhere. I don’t think it’s a case of somebody being a bad person. I think there’s a much wider context around a lot of these problems, a lot of which have their root in colonialism and cycles of oppression that continue today. But I think having that perspective, I think something that really lacks in the UK and across many Western countries is the sense of community and the sense of respect for different generations between each other. For young people to experience intergenerational dialogue, it can be really powerful and having these conversations could be such a strong tool for dealing with these problems with the youth, which again are just another manifestation of systems of oppression that were created generations ago when slavery happened. There’s so many different avenues that we can tackle, colonialism, white supremacy, racism, those issues intersect with many other issues. But each one, each little pathway, can help you get to that same kind of destination. I love this concept of rehumanising people.”
“I think some young people on the streets, they’re acting out what they can’t solve. I think everybody would love to see a better world. But young people don’t know how. It would have been nice if a group of young people come together and say we’ve had enough, especially those who are in the gangs and whatever, and say, I think we’re really going in the wrong path. They don’t reflect either. Reflection is something that, for me, is one of the most valuable tools. You reflect at the end of the day, and if they were reflecting and looking at what happened during the day and saw how many lives they’ve caused a problem with, how many hurt or much pain or much grief and anger, they would probably change. Because they need to do that. Think about when you hurt someone, it’s not just the person you hurt, it’s your family, yourself and that person’s family and all of your friends. So it’s something that we need to get them into…, we need to get them in a place where they can talk, just talk. Just talk about what is happening to them on the street, how they’re coping, how they’re not coping, why they’re not coping, what it’s doing to them, because they’re traumatized. They’re scared. They’re afraid of everything that is going on. That is why they tool up themselves. That is why they behave in that way. It’s a matter of protecting themselves. Because if you notice when something happens like that, they say, oh, I was protecting myself, it’s to protect myself. What are you protecting yourself from? Or who? Your own self. I think it has to start from home as well. But you cannot give what you haven’t got – the parents don’t know how to do that. They’re traumatized and they’re living off that. That is what is portrayed on their children. So that mindset needs to be shifted to something more positive. And then once you start changing, then your household will see a change. You don’t even have to talk to them, but they will see that you’ve changed. So it’s going to take a lot of work. Maybe another 100 years from today is probably just coming to fruition, you know, but it needs, it’s something that needs to start now. Some serious conversations need to start. And peer support, because that you guys are in this, adopt somebody or set up a little peer support groups and just run little sessions and just talk to them. Let people talk. How they are, what’s going on on the street with them, how they’re feeling, what do you think we should do, the same kind of conversation we’re having, do peer support.”
“I think listening to others, I think is something that has impacted me, because growing up I’ve been taught to listen, listen to others and not just jump into conclusions and saying this and that. Listening. I think which is why each community or everywhere I go I just find it easy to not to just interrupt and just I find it easy to just make friends so I think those are some of the positive things that have impacted my life over the years and for which I treasure, really. I really treasure and I keep telling my children, I said, we have been brought up this way and I hope you will be able to also be able to be good listeners to others and not being judgmental.”
“I began in those years to actively search out, to read terms like Shek Lanta Chok, really celebrated writers of the continent who were helping us understand our post-colonialist condition you know you’ve got Nkugiwa Chiongo writing about decolonizing the minds and being somebody who always loved reading and writing I found myself a very intellectual circles and we’d have all these long debates and conversations which for me was a pathway to understanding but what it was also helping me understand inequality, injustice and it was building up within me, unbeknownst to me, as utter rage, outrage. And in these circles, which were, yes, some of it would be in the home, but mostly I would go and find these places outside.”
“I think the first thing that is needed on both sides would be acceptance. It’s to accept the person for the past because one of the things that I notice is that sometimes people label people as well out of ignorance and they look at a country and what is happening in that country and so they label the country, the person, as what is happening in their country and that is not fair. So you accept the person for being a human being like yourself. And you try to find out about them. So, I mean, story sharing is one of the greatest gifts. But before that, it’s the basic manners. It’s a lot of trauma going on and there’s a lot of hatred and a lot of fear and a lot of guilt as well. But if we go beyond that and look at the person as how you would want to be treated, then I think it would be different. As you were saying, having a conversation, that’s a start. How can we start those conversations with the youth? The youth, the young adults who need to know about the history, the actual history. They know, but at the same time they don’t know what had actually happened and the depth of the situation that they have been through.”
“I guess there is definitely shame. And I guess I probably have a bit of a unique perspective on this because my family is bi-racial, but also multi-ethnic. So I think having a white father and a mother who’s descended from indigenous communities, I think it’s a really complicated dynamic actually, because on the one hand I am obviously white so I very much benefit from all of the kind of the privileges of having the skin that I do. Living in in the body that I live in, I am treated differently to my sister who’s got darker skin than me. She looks a lot more like my mother and it’s a really interesting dynamic because I’ve only in the last couple of years, through doing a lot of mental digging, realised that I have a guilt, because I come from a country that colonised – I’m English and I can’t deny that. But I’m also from a country that was so heavily colonised and brutalized – the indigenous massacres that occurred in the country that I come from – that’s also part of my heritage. So it just leaves me in this area where I feel wow, especially because I’m white as well. I think it creates this really weird tension in how I relate to history because I do have a responsibility to be aware of my English heritage and history, but at the same time, my Latin American history deserves the recognition as well. I used to kind of see it as something that made me complicated and caused me a lot of pain, but I think I’m getting to a stage where I can see the benefits of having both, because it can really open your mind, and I think what this project is doing with these young people, especially working with young Caucasian white people, is creating that space, as if they’d grown up like me, having both voices, and that work is immense and I have so much respect for it because I think being able to connect with people, especially a lot of white people who are ashamed or scared of their past, getting into their feelings and encouraging them to connect to that is really difficult. And then the fear is that if those people that we have meted out evil to act like us what would life be like for them. Then people come and say, well that was hundreds of years ago. That’s in the past. I was not there, I did not do it. I’m not responsible for it. But, hello, you benefited from the proceeds of evil! “
“We went to the publishing house and we had a tour and he said, I will never forget this, I’m 14 years old, and he said, I want to create this as a stepping stone. what do you do? I said, oh, I like writing, I like reading. He said, this is a stepping stone for your career. Use it. So if you want to write something about your experience, we’ll publish it. I said, yeah, I’d love that. And then after that, they said, do you want to write more? I said, yeah. So then I became a regular contributor. For me, I’m getting CDs through my door, I’m doing CD reviews, I’m getting any concert I want to go to, it’s great, I’m interviewing artists…”
“I tried that with my children. All the time when they go out and they don’t come, I keep calling them. And when they are not picking up the phone, I was like, where are you? Please pick up the phone. So now we give that space to our children and just let them be as long as they know what they’re doing and just monitoring them and just guiding them through and all we’ve been telling them is you know, you’re young adults, you know what you want and you know how the world is out there – it is really up to you to judge what is right and what to do when you think you’re not comfortable.”
“Growing up our parents, particularly our mum, used to tell us that if there’s a fight, as children and then you come back home crying, so and so has done me this, you get another spanking from her. So I think we grew up just keeping things to ourselves and not really saying, because our mum was like that so when you have issues out there with somebody, you don’t say, you just keep it to yourself and just deal with it, find ways of how you can deal with the issues or the problems that you’re finding yourself in, unless it is something that you really feel you need to tell your mum – that is when she would listen – but most of the time she’s busy with her chores and we are also busy with our chores in school, housework and just balancing in between school, housework and also being responsible for you. I remember growing up we had this big farm in Uganda, a coffee farm ,and so before we go to school we would go first to the garden, and we thought our parents were really mistreating us by telling us to go first to the garden and then go to school but later on I realized that it was a good thing – it was a responsibility that goes with it, and also some of these petty fights that children have – I thought that was also a way our parents were showing us how to resolve conflicts with ourselves – because if you are not able to deal with a situation yourself, you cannot be able to resolve with somebody else. So I found from my parents that strong point of what has made me who I am – by not covering small, minor quarrels that you have as siblings or sometimes as friends in school and bringing them to their family. So that I think taught me a lot of things in life – that there are certain things that you know as an individual you need to deal with. But if it is really something that you cannot deal with it as an individual then get a second or a third person to help you resolve it. And I remember our mum telling us that even when you get married one day – when you have a fight with your husband it’s not good for you to say to every other person and if you have a fight with your husband and you are sent back to me I’m going to send you back because I need to find out why you came back. And so I think over the years we learned to just deal with situations like that, even in my own marriage unless it is really something that I must get a second person, we dealt with issues in our marriage with my husband as they are – and also with our children – we dealt with issues with my family first, rather than taking them out to others – so I think that is a strong thing that I learned from my parents.”
“The way we treat elders in my culture – elders are really looked up to. There’s a little word they call ‘manners’, or deference, and you’ve got to be polite. You’ve got to show respect and regard for elders, so you dare not speak to an elder in a derogatory way. You would never dream of swearing to an elder. I mean, and the whole culture was like that when I was growing up. And the first thing, if you pass a man in the street, you don’t have to know him, but if he’s an elder, you have to greet him. So if his name was John, you’d say, good morning John. And if you did not greet him, he would then go and speak to your, in my case, my grandmother who I grew up with. And my grandmother would give me a real tongue whacking of how rude I am. And that rudeness is simply because I didn’t greet John. Because it was that this wonderful respect and regard. So when I came to Britain and I heard kids – I remember this boy and when his mother called him, he said, WHAAAT?! And I thought, oh my god, how on earth do you answer your mum like that? If it was from my culture, it just wouldn’t happen.”
“I mean I love talking to young people. My grandson, he makes me laugh, he calls me nice. You’re my best friend … I can talk to you, I can tell you anything. And even if I mess up and you tell me off, you don’t really keep any malice. You always talk to me again. I’m from the old school, because I was brought up by my grandmother. And she instilled a lot of really, really good values and principles in us. And one thing that I know, reflecting back to when I was growing up, what I see lacking these days, especially in this country, is the basic manners. Manners. My grandmother used to say manners carry you through the world. If you’re black, if you’re white, if you’re young, if you’re old, if you’re ugly, if you’re pretty, if you haven’t got manners, you’re not going anywhere. The basics, excuse me, thank you, please, I’m sorry. If you don’t have that in your vocabulary, how are you going to survive? You will be forever angry and full of hate and acting really stupid.”
“I guess sometimes a lot of people tend to segregate themselves without even realising it. Like in our school, it wasn’t like people decided that this is where certain people were going to sit, but they ended up moving to those locations anyway. Like, I vividly remember when I was in secondary, there was a specific group of people from just purely Somali culture, and they would all sit together collectively and they would actively avoid other people, and I did not want to sit there. So I kind of made it my mission to not be one of those people purely because there wasn’t really, in my opinion, any point in going to a diverse school if you weren’t going to mix with other people. “
“Before we moved from South Sudan to London we used to mix with different groups people and so on until some of these inter-communal fights just broke out and then people started to be in groups. And so when we came to London, we went for a few other occasions and I would find a certain community just sitting alone and then I would find myself sitting in the community that I belonged to. And I’d been observing this and I just told myself, I think I’m not going to allow this to continue. So one time, just recently, we went for some function, some event, and the same group started again, and I told the people in the community that I was in, the group that I was in, I said, how come we always sit like this? And so-and-so is there by herself. And one of the ladies who was seated by herself, belongs to a certain community, and I said I’m going to say hello to her. And so I went to say hello to her and I ended up spending the whole time in the event sitting with her and her community, and we clicked so we’ve been now having conversations. … It takes really a self-driven initiative but it’s good to just step into the other group and find out what is it. Because sometimes we have our perceptions of the other, and that is really not what they are thinking. And that’s exactly what I found. I just went there. The conversation was just as normal. And so they were saying, okay, they always group themselves like that. I said, but it’s not nice, we all come from the same place, we need to just get ourselves together and if there are things, it’s better to dialogue and so we know what the difference is.”
“I am the best ambassador of my country and that’s a personal decision. If they say, people know Nigeria for this and that, the most corrupt people. Nigeria is this and that. I say, well, let them come and encounter me, and I’m going to show them a different face of Nigeria. And that is a personal decision. So you choose what sort of Nigerian you want to be. That has given me a sense of peace, knowing who I am. And then my role, my small, tiny role, I hope it makes a difference somewhere at least – maybe just one more person that’s okay – I’m happy with that.”
“There’s such a heavy link between places of power, places of leadership, and looking into the past, because part of history is making mistakes. And when you’re referencing an industry, and an atrocity, such as slavery, it’s more than just a mistake – it’s so many things and we have to be able to understand how it’s happened and how we cope in the present with the legacy of that. How do we make sure that we don’t repeat that legacy, even if it may not be directly? A lot of Africans are quite used to beating themselves in the head. We’re not, I’m not, doing good enough. I’m not good enough. Our leaders are stupid. But to be honest, part of the legacy of both colonialism and slavery is that it has continued to date. Policies and systems, structures are in place that absolutely make it impossible to navigate to make meaningful progress. So if you are aware and conscious of it, as a young African for example, and for me also – I think there also needs to be a balance for young people of Caucasian origin to also face their history, take responsibility and not to perpetuate what is not right in the system worldwide. You know, you cannot perpetuate evil and think that good will come back to you. … Because you are only prolonging the repercussion coming to you. But if you learn how to humbly look at history, could my forebears, my ancestors, have been stupid in thinking that this was the right path? It may have been right for them at that point. It was a sign of bravery, it was a sign of smartness, but what sort of smartness? We need to look critically at the perpetrators of evil, what sort of mind do they have? By what values were they living?”
“When I reflect on the history teaching I had, it was, I mean, this is a respectful way of saying it, but it was inadequate. It was crap. It was really, and at the time, I won’t pretend I knew that it was so tainted, and the glasses, the spectacles that we were seeing through were foggy. They weren’t telling us the truth, we weren’t seeing the truth. And, I’m lucky that I had my mum, because I think through her I’ve learned to have a passion for justice and for history. And that ten-angry-gods fire to fight for justice – because sometimes you do have to fight, and sometimes you have to learn and you have to listen. But I think what’s really missing from many countries, including colonized countries, is that honest discussion and history. And I guess that is probably one of the most feasible ways of healing some of these wounds, for schools and institutions to take this as a priority. And to say, well, actually, we’re not going to throw our head in the sand, we’re going to educate our youth. We’re going to teach them the really true history. And in that way, you’re preventing history from repeating itself. Because if you keep ignoring it, and you keep running away… I mean, this is exactly what allows these systems to persist. Because we don’t address it. We don’t look at it in the eye and say, wow, you’re the beast that’s keeping people down. And so it’s a really powerful thing to introduce that learning. Because if it’s your own history, or for a lot of white people, understanding that this is as much your history as somebody else’s, because these are your ancestors. And you might not have been on the receiving end, but you can still empathize. Having that empathy, having that connection is so valuable.”
“So is it important for important for the young adults to know what has happened and how we are moving forward. It is extremely important to know where we’re coming from, because people know snippets, but they don’t know the whole story. And it’s important that, for me, I think they should have a whole curriculum in school, that they teach about slavery and the slave trade and the effects of slavery, that’s one of the main things, the effects of slavery and what happens to people.”
“I began to address the slavery question from a governance perspective because I saw that could be a site for transformation. So, I had a natural leaning towards that kind of practice, but I also saw that as I’m sitting in these circles, what we’re doing is we’re talking and we’re talking and we’re talking, we’re getting more and more traumatized, getting more and more angry, you don’t have an outlet for this. So writing was my thing, media was my early career, I would use those platforms to express myself and come to an understanding that I could look at culture, I can look at governance, I can look at voice, social justice, and I can be an activist. What do all these things mean? And what this did was really strengthen my resolve to this work. And so, my encounters with slavery and the impact of slavery are traumatic because I relive them daily. I choose to do this because I see it as an ancestral path. I see that this is my mission, this is my life purpose. I create spaces to have courageous conversations with everyone that’s interested in race and equity because these are the legacies of slavery colonialism we’re facing every day we sat at the lunch table just now put somebody from South Sudan sitting next to me and she’s talking about the civil war that’s in her country you know and it won’t take long for us to get to understand the connection to slavery, the impact of colonialism, etc.”
“So we created a whole, you could say it’s awareness, it was engagement, my work is about engagement really, but yes creating awareness and my son when I came home and said look this is what we’re doing he jumped up and said okay mum I can get my friends together we can create like a jam session at lunchtime and he had his friends doing graffiti and what do you need and the deputy head and everybody was like just tell us what you need and you’ll get it. And we did this amazing school, pupils, made a film, it was great. And at the end of that special day that we had dedicated to this, the deputy head who had called me and commissioned me for this work said, we want to… Thank you dear. We want to really thank you, Ivo, that’s my son’s name. Because without your experience, as hard as it was, we recognise and honour that, and the way your mum responded, we wouldn’t be doing this, and it’s really important work. And from that moment, my son went even, no, he went again more internal, because he’s introvert, and he didn’t want the spotlight on him. So you’re dealing with a human being and their our own complexities just as a human being and then you’ve got these other layers and dimensions of racism and oh now i’m being spotlighted oh you know you probably might even use the term gaslight in this day and age now he would probably say that yeah. So it’s it’s and so as a mother who works as a social justice activist in the field of race and equity, seeing her own children go through this, my second child had a different experience, it’s really interesting, but it’s nonetheless impacted. I see his confidence is impacted, and it erodes something within this education system. So that’s just education, you know. How do I have that conversation? I brought all the children together at some point, and we were doing art with some and homework with another and they used to really love it and we would bring in conversations around culture. … until now, to have a conversation with my son about what he experienced at school is incredibly difficult. I can look at him and say he’s got, from what I, in my layperson’s view, could see as PTSD. I can’t have a conversation, because he’s built his armor up around it.”
“I’ll tell you one of the most awful stories, that I will always remember. So I came to England and I was working at this egg company and my job was working in what we called the store room. This company had a farm and they used to sell eggs to shops, and so I used to be at the depot putting the eggs into boxes and stuff, and there were occasions when the drivers of the trucks who take the eggs to the shops didn’t have anyone to go with them, say someone was sick or something. This day I had to go on the trucks and this guy, I was sitting next to him in the cabin and he said to me, when a black man goes to bed, if he covers with a white sheet when he wakes up in the morning, does it turn black? I sort of sank through the chassis of the truck. I didn’t even know where to look. And the first thing that came to my attention to answer was to just ask him the question the other way around – to say, well if a white man goes to bed and he covers with a black sheet would he turn it white? But the thing is my manners would not allow me to ask him the question because of my cultural upbringing – you were never ever rude to an adult so I just looked at him and I said no, it doesn’t turn black, the white sheet doesn’t turn black . And as I went through life that word forgiveness always come to my mind because I always think these things are just born of ignorance. I know better, so I ought to behave better. So I simply forgave him.”