Look at you, coming home with your American accent, with your loud laugh and your walk. That walk that does not bend. Look at you, questioning your old ways, wrapping your words with love for your land. Look at you, claiming your body belongs to you and never a man. Look at you, an isolated island with barely enough of home to keep you warm. Look at you struggling to not sink under the pressure of not belonging. You create another way. Look at you, coming to find yourself inside your home but being told you don’t belong. Look at you. Look at you.
You never realize how you do not seem to quite fit inside both worlds. You try to allow yourself remember that home must understand something: No matter how different your tongue carries words, you are still hers. However, we realize home isn’t all you might have romanticized her to be. You then slowly realize that you are always enough for yourself and maybe that is all you need. That is enough and that should be enough. The feeling of “otherness” in both places leaves one feeling a bit uncertain, a bit unsure and a bit perplexed. A bit hurt at times.
---via Ijeoma Umebinyuo, the diaspora ways and clinging to home to feel alive.
The first is her poem on how hard it is to fit in cross culturally, after living in one country and returning to your homeland. And then the 2nd part is her responding to one of her readers on her interpretation of it. I read it sometime last week and thought it really spoke to me, and when a whole bunch of her readers wrote in saying the same, I was glad I wasn't the only one who responded to the piece. Even though, as many people have pointed out that I shouldn't rightfully feel the otherness upon my return, there are certain times it just hits me.
The other day a friend of mine caught me complaining about how I cannot get into Lagos.
He said, "You said the same thing about Atlanta."
I caught myself and realized I may have said that too. But truly I can't get into Lagos. At all. The women are so vapid and materialistic, not very many of them read, expand their minds beyond the ordinary. Not sure how folks hold conversations with them, long, solid conversations with them via Whatsapp and whatnot. I can't say more than 2 words to them. And true some women in Atlanta are like that. But the difference between Atlanta women and Lagos women is...they take care of themselves. Completely. They are financially responsible for themselves so they have to read somewhat. Your hairdresser will know everything there is to know about hair, read every hair manual there is and she would pay her own bills etc. Lagos women, a majority of them are not that self sufficient. There's that whole "let me see if someone will pay this bill or that," so it makes them have to dumb themselves down to this men just so they don't argue with the men and present a varying opinion that might make the men feel threatened, like she is a strong woman - one who has a brain. The men will only like them and support them if they are agreeable, pliable and supportive and their number 1 fans. Really not sure why someone will make it his part time job to date people that think that way.
Anyway, I digress.
So that's why I nurse this feeling of otherness. I lean too much on this side and too much on the other side. Not enough on one side to feel whole, like I belong, like it is my home. Or maybe I never gave the other home a shot.
