Dear Child of Many Roots,
Twenty‑Two Reflections for Young Africans at Home and Abroad
We stand at a threshold where passports serve as certificates of courage and surnames register as resilience tests. We are called diaspora kids, third‑culture hybrids, homebirds and runaways, sometimes all before breakfast. Elders gift us proverbs; the internet gifts us paradoxes. Somewhere between those two libraries we must write a life. These reflections are a compass, not a cage: twenty‑one ways to map the terrain and then chart your own route.
How to Use This
Each reflection offers two movements:
The Terrain – a candid sketch of the pressures, pitfalls and possibilities that shape this corner of life.
Compass – narrative guidance woven from research, stories and tested wisdom meant to help you navigate with courage, nuance and joy.
Read front to back or dip where the light feels brightest. Annotate, argue, adapt. A manifesto lives only when you wrestle it into your own accent.
1 · Naming the Self
The Terrain
You carry a chorus of identities: the ancestral name sung over your cradle, the trimmed version your primary‑school teacher could pronounce, and the gamer tag you forged at midnight in a London bedsit. TikTok clips about third‑culture kids confess the same disorientation; I belong everywhere and nowhere at once. Yet every label holds a story: parents who Anglicised your forename so human‑resources software would not choke, airport officials who groaned at diacritics, friends who tease but secretly admire your multilingual tongue. The danger is fragmentation, to become an anthology of aliases with no author. The promise is elasticity, the power to code‑switch without erasing substance.
Compass
Identity is not a courtroom where only one name may stand. Begin a private ritual: speak each of your names aloud until they feel like chapters of a single autobiography. When a form amputates your diacritics, decide consciously whether to comply for expedience or insist for dignity; both choices are valid when deliberate. Ask elders why they chose your birth names; stories of wartime, migration or prophecy often surface. Curate these tales in a digital archive for younger cousins who will one day search the meaning of their lineage on Google. Finally, embrace evolution: the college nickname that suited your reckless twenties may feel ill‑fitting at thirty‑five. Retire it with gratitude; adopt a title that reflects current texture. Wholeness is less about singularity than about coherence.
2 · Love & Partnership
The Terrain
Scroll through Reddit or family WhatsApp threads and a familiar ache appears: My African parents will not accept my partner. Objections wear many masks; tribe, denomination, complexion, even horoscope. Beneath them often lies fear, fear of cultural extinction, fear that rituals may die unpractised, fear that a hard‑won migration story might fracture under strange customs. Yet love will not be shrink‑wrapped for inspection; it grows messy roots in unexpected soil. Between parental veto and romantic idealism stands a young couple trying to honour the old while inventing the new.
Compass
Seek first to understand the fear behind the frown. Ask parents to name specific futures they dread: alien grandchildren or holiday dilemmas. Practical concerns invite practical assurances, so offer clear plans: which language the children will learn first, how holiday visits will rotate, why faith traditions can coexist. Simultaneously, invite your beloved to apprentice in the culture that shaped you; love is a two‑way pilgrimage. If parental blessing remains withheld, approach a respected family friend who can translate between generations. Remember your agency: parents may grant blessing, but they cannot grant destiny. Choosing love is an adult decision and living with its consequences is adulthood’s rite of passage. Harmony may arrive late, but truth spoken kindly leaves fewer scars than silence padded with resentment.
3 · Faith & Spirit
The Terrain
A viral Easter thread asked, Can you be Christian and still doubt literal resurrection? Thousands replied with tales of pastors labelling them rebels for asking why. Others celebrated mothers who keep prayer lists on WhatsApp for their wandering children. The spectrum runs from rigid dogma to elastic spirituality, all under the wide tent of a faith transmitted through colonial mission, revival crusades and YouTube sermons. What unites these stories is yearning; for meaning, belonging and language big enough to hold doubt without exile.
Compass
Approach faith as dialogue, not verdict. Read scripture with a double lens: honour the ancient context while interrogating how power has shaped interpretation. Invite parents into that study; you may discover shared discomfort with verses misused to justify control. Practise rituals that root you: morning gratitude, communal worship, silent walks. When habit slides into hollow performance, pause. Should institutional faith bruise more than it heals, step back without abandoning the quest for transcendence; solitude and the psalms of nature mentored saints long before seminaries existed. Above all, remember a living faith matures: it should cradle the child you were, stretch with the sceptic you become, and enthrone the elder you will one day be.
4 · Career & Vocation
The Terrain
From childhood you were served a menu; doctor, engineer, lawyer or disgracing the family. Yet in the gig economy categories blur. You might code apps by day and paint murals by night, but explaining that to relatives remains awkward. Economic realities bite: visas hinge on payslips and siblings’ school fees depend on your remittances. Meanwhile Instagram parades curated success against pastel backdrops, accelerating burnout. The risk is to hustle without horizon; the hope is to weave livelihood and longing into one sturdy rope.
Compass
Distinguish work from vocation: the former pays rent, the latter pays soul. They can overlap; they need not. Draft a five‑year learning plan rather than a five‑year job plan; skills outlive titles. Negotiate salary with the same boldness your aunt uses to discuss bride‑price; value is cultural, not cosmic. Guard against comparison; your timeline is not a racetrack but a garden with bespoke seasons. If you remit money home, set transparent boundaries; generosity plus sustainability equals longevity. Celebrate lateral moves; sometimes switching industries is progress in disguise.
5 · Place & Migration
The Terrain
Visas expire like cartons of yoghurt, and borders harden like arteries. At departures you promise to come back, yet not every promise survives customs. You romanticise hometown sunsets while cursing its power cuts. In new cities you are both exotic and invisible, invited to speak about culture day yet overlooked for promotion. Apartment leases renew in pound sterling while your heart converts rent into exchange‑rate guilt. The tension is perpetual: roots pull one ankle, wings pull the other.
Compass
Create a personal geography statement that lists what you truly require from a location; safety, creative ferment, affordable worship community, professional networks. Evaluate each city against that matrix, and be ruthless with sentimentality. Cultivate portable rituals such as spice blends, playlists, Sunday roasts and parkruns; they anchor you amid flux. Keep immigration paperwork ahead of emotion, because embassies rarely grant extensions for nostalgia. Build community before winter; loneliness is colder than the weather. Finally, treat home as a verb: cooked, sung and spoken into being each ordinary week, rather than minted only by birth certificate.
6 · Money & Wealth
The Terrain
When elders ask, “How is work?” they often mean, “Send pounds.” Bride‑price negotiations, funeral levies and black‑tax obligations weave finance and family into a single braid. Meanwhile fintech adverts nudge you to trade crypto before you budget rent, and housing markets mock your savings plan. Wealth gaps widen between siblings who stayed and those who left, turning reunions into covert audits. Money promises freedom but often purchases pressure instead.
Compass
Draft a personal constitution that sets percentages for saving, investing and giving before emotions invite chaos. Research taxation in every country you inhabit because penalties speak every language. Separate generosity from guilt; a well‑tended boundary today fertilises future giving. Invest in assets that appreciate faster than relatives’ requests, starting with your own education. Practice transparent conversations with family: explain exchange rates, show budgets and describe your limits. Remember that wealth measures options rather than virtue; pursue enoughness first and purpose after.
7 · Mental Health & Emotional Resilience
The Terrain
Anxiety is dismissed as overthinking, depression as laziness and therapy as indulgence. Yet hustle culture and trans‑oceanic grief fray nerves. Video‑call funerals deny closure, and exchange‑rate crashes shake stability. Group chats oscillate between memes and emergency loan requests, making rest feel illicit. In private you search symptoms; in public you manufacture highlight reels.
Compass
Treat emotional vocabulary as multilingual. Name feelings in both mother tongue and English, because translation surfaces nuance. Build micro‑rest into the day: five deep breaths at traffic lights, a phone‑free meal, a sunset walk. Seek professional help early; you service your car more often than your psyche, so reverse that ratio. Curate a joy playlist of music, memes and memories to deploy when the mood dips. Build resilience circles where friends agree to check on one another monthly. Remember that resilience is community property; lean, then lift.
8 · Gender & Sexuality
The Terrain
Patriarchal scripts still cast men as providers and women as guardians of virtue; divergence invites scrutiny. Body image battles purity culture, and discussions of consent often arrive late. In group chats, friends debate whether the term feminist is a badge or a slur. Among cousins, bride‑price inflated by competition commodifies affection.
Compass
Affirm dignity before debate. Trace which gender norms serve protection and which serve domination; keep only the former. Engage disagreements with humility, acknowledging your convictions while hearing the fears of those who differ. Approach courtship and intimacy within clear ethical boundaries shaped by faith, mutual respect and long‑term vision. Guard speech: jokes that demean bodies or belittle holiness erode self‑respect. Teach younger siblings that honour and kindness are lifelong garments and not temporary uniforms. Remember that your body is a gift requiring stewardship, and that self‑control is not repression but freedom in practice.
9 · Culture & Tradition
The Terrain
Masquerades and masquerade balls, palm‑wine and Pinot Grigio; cultural collisions can enrich or confuse. Elders warn against losing yourself, yet culture never stands still; it shapeshifts with each migration and remix. Diaspora children quote proverbs in English accents, while cousin communities back home stream K‑pop. The question: how to keep what nourishes while releasing what wounds.
Compass
Learn at least one indigenous language; syntax is a firewall against forgetting. Archive family stories in audio, video or writing before memory dissipates, and store them in the cloud. Evaluate rituals: keep those that heal, revise those that merely preserve appearances and discard those that harm. Innovate by fusing old and new: weave kente into graduation gowns, quote proverbs on podcasts, infuse afro‑beat rhythms into hymns. Culture is clay rather than concrete; sculpt responsibly and leave room for successors to shape further.
10 · Creativity & Storytelling
The Terrain
Global media often narrates Africa as tragedy or triumph with little in between. Gatekeepers may sit in New York or London, yet smartphones double as studios, and online audiences are borderless. Algorithms reward outrage more than nuance; still, stories crave telling and art insists on existing.
Compass
Treat creativity as civic duty. Tell narratives that disturb comfort and comfort the disturbed. Master at least one creative tool such as camera, pen or code, and practise daily. Own your intellectual property; ancestors sang for free but you can register royalties. Build collaborative circles to share equipment and cross‑pollinate ideas. Submit work to local festivals alongside global platforms; acclaim begins at home. Finally, recognise silence as a story too; choose when to break it in the service of truth.
11 · Digital Footprints
The Terrain
Screenshots immortalise error, algorithms reward outrage and search engines resurrect decade‑old opinions without context. A careless tweet posted in secondary school can resurface during a job interview, and a party photo might contradict the wholesome persona you now curate. Family elders discover Facebook Marketplace while younger cousins migrate to fleeting platforms. We straddle overlapping eras of the internet, one permanent and one disappearing, each shaping reputation in ways previous generations never imagined.
Compass
Treat your online presence as a living archive. Every six months, search your own name across platforms to audit what strangers will see in five seconds. Remove, re‑contextualise or own content that no longer reflects you; silence breeds speculation, transparency breeds trust. Practise a digital Sabbath at least one screen‑free day each week to remind your nervous system that significance is not measured in notifications. When posting, ask three questions: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Draft and wait twenty‑four hours when unsure because urgency fuels regret. Diversify identity lanes: professional site, close‑friends story, anonymous art blog. Guard data like inheritance by enabling two‑factor authentication and using password managers. Your digital footprint is both diary and billboard; curate it with future grace.
12 · Activism & Civic Voice
The Terrain
From End SARS hashtags to cost‑of‑living marches, youth movements oscillate between viral momentum and government clampdown. Online petitions hit a million signatures overnight, yet policy drafts languish in committee for years. Protestors stream police brutality in real time while troll farms flood comment sections with disinformation. Activist fatigue creeps in through court dates, lost wages, family scepticism and painful memories of crackdowns. Even so, the urge to raise a placard remains because silence is political.
Compass
Begin with clarity: write a purpose statement that even a sceptical auntie could understand. Break goals into winnable pieces such as legislative amendments or school‑based awareness. Build teams that rotate roles to avoid burnout. Use secure channels like Signal for sensitive planning and assume public platforms are monitored. Document thoroughly because history is contested in real time. Prepare a ninety‑second story that humanises data when courting media. Practise rest as resistance: debrief after actions, schedule mental‑health check‑ins and celebrate incremental victories. Activism is a relay, not a sprint; when one generation tires, the baton must still be moving forward.
13 · Leadership & Service
The Terrain
We inherit two contrasting archetypes: the paternalistic big‑man who rules by decree and the tech‑founder hero who claims to move fast and break things. Both leave collateral damage, one in communities, the other in burnout and broken trust. Diaspora professionals juggle being diversity poster children at work while mentoring siblings back home via midnight calls. Authentic leadership feels caught between ego, expectation and exhaustion.
Compass
Redefine leadership as stewardship. Start with the smallest circle such as roommates or a project team and practise invitational decision making: every voice, even dissent, deserves a hearing. Replace the command‑and‑control memo with transparent dashboards that show who decides what, by when and why. Share credit visibly; it lubricates collaboration better than any perk. Offer office hours where juniors can seek guidance without gatekeepers. Invest in self‑development through therapy, coaching and retreat because unexamined wounds leak into policy. Remember: succession is success; plan to hand over roles before you crave the exit. Power that multiplies itself outlives the holder.
14 · Friendship & Networks
The Terrain
Cheap flights promise impromptu reunions, yet visa queues argue otherwise. Group chats splinter into sub‑groups, some dormant, some explosive. Friends may be physically near but living on a different mental calendar, overworked and under‑slept. Networking events hand out lanyards yet rarely deliver depth. Amid high mobility and micro‑communities, loneliness can bloom even with two thousand followers.
Compass
Curate concentric circles of intimacy. Inner circle: those who can enter your flat unannounced and know where the teaspoons are. Mid‑circle: collaborators who challenge and champion you. Outer circle: acquaintances with potential, water them periodically. Use technology intentionally with scheduled video brunches, shared playlists and co‑reading apps. Celebrate friendship anniversaries because ritual sustains memory. At formal networking events, shift focus from “What do you do?” to “What problem excites you lately?” Purpose magnetises connection faster than titles. When a friendship’s season closes, host a soft‑landing conversation offering gratitude and blessing for their next chapter. Healthy endings fertilise future beginnings.
15 · Rest & Rhythm
The Terrain
Between back‑to‑back video meetings and side‑hustle alerts, rest often arrives as collapse rather than cadence. Diaries become grid‑locked, and holiday plans turn into content projects. The prosperity gospel sometimes frames exhaustion as evidence of divine industriousness, yet chronic sleep debt links to mental illness and metabolic disorders. Burnout is not a badge but an invoice with compound interest.
Compass
Reframe rest as maintenance, not reward. Adopt a morning check‑in involving body, mind and spirit before devices intrude. Institute micro‑pauses: stretch during downloads, drink water between slides, gaze at the horizon every hour. Mark a weekly tech‑free half day, informing family so they do not call the police. Schedule holidays with purpose—a writing retreat, silent pilgrimage or hammock time by the sea. Budget leisure the same way you budget utilities because play prevents costly repairs. Practise good‑enough endings; close laptops at ninety per cent, trusting that marginal gains rarely outweigh revived creativity tomorrow.
16 · Beauty & Body
The Terrain
Billboards alternate between skin‑lightening creams in Lagos and tanning salons in Birmingham; commerce monetises insecurity. Fashion micro‑trends cycle so fast that last month’s trainers already feel obsolete, and gym culture sometimes swaps health for hyper‑visibility. Mothers critique weight as casually as weather, unaware of scale‑sized traumas they trigger.
Compass
Anchor beauty in function and story. Pay attention to your body’s signals such as hunger, fatigue and delight, treating them as trusted elders. Diversify your social feed with bodies that resemble yours and ones that do not; empathy dilutes envy. Practise joyful movement—dance, hike or swim—rather than punitive reps. Calculate cost per wear instead of brand prestige when shopping; sustainability is style. Allow appearance rituals like haircuts and skincare if they nurture self‑regard, and pause them if they mask shame. Your body is a biography written in skin; tend it for endurance rather than applause.
17 · Failure & Reinvention
The Terrain
Family group chats celebrate only graduations, weddings and mortgage signings. Yet behind every milestone lies an archive of rejected applications, prototype flops and tear‑stained prayers. In a cancel‑culture era, public mistakes feel fatal, encouraging perfectionism that paralyses experimentation.
Compass
Curate a museum of attempts. Catalogue projects that did not launch, lessons that cost money and relationships that taught you boundaries. Share exhibits with trusted peers because collective debrief normalises risk. Practise quick and cheap experimentation such as minimum viable products and pilot courses. Develop a twenty‑four‑hour grief ritual—journaling, long runs or comfort meals—then pivot. When failure involves others, apologise promptly, repair tangibly and document growth publicly. Reinvention is not genuine if old wounds leak into the new venture; heal deeply before relaunch.
18 · Legacy & Ancestry
The Terrain
Your surname may open doors in one postcode and raise eyebrows in another. Diaspora children can recite visa clauses but struggle with clan genealogies. Property disputes back home drag through courts, and funeral WhatsApp groups resurrect unresolved grievances. Legacy feels like both treasure and ticking bomb.
Compass
Begin with inventory: family land deeds, oral myths and archived letters. Digitise fragile documents because cloud storage outlives humidity. Interview elders with a voice recorder; laughter mid‑story adds priceless colour. Draft basic wills even at twenty‑eight to model responsibility. Allocate a percentage of income to a legacy project such as a bursary fund, public library or reforesting initiative. Legacy should guide future generations towards possibility rather than trap them in nostalgia. Build yours with both mirror and telescope in hand.
19 · Joy & Celebration
The Terrain
Breaking news scrolls faster than birthdays, tricking us into crisis fatigue. Cultural festivals clash with work deadlines; by December many feel too drained to dance. The diaspora dilemma whispers behave yourself when carnival drums rumble.
Compass
Strategise joy the way accountants strategise tax; deliberately and within bounds. Create a calendar of micro‑celebrations such as first snow, manuscript finished or rent paid. Rotate hosting duties because pot‑luck dinners cut costs and democratise cuisine. Revive family chants or invent new toasts; ritual supports memory. Capture moments selectively—one photo, then pockets away—to protect presence. Share playlists across time zones so distant cousins can two‑step in sync. Joy is generative power; it fuels resistance, health and art.
20 · Curiosity & Lifelong Learning
The Terrain
We applaud degree ceremonies, then shelve minds on autopilot. Algorithmic feeds reinforce existing tastes in music, politics and recipes, reducing novelty to shock headlines. Professional development budgets favour immediate return on investment over expansive wonder. Intellectual stagnation rarely announces itself; it seeps in quietly until questions feel exhausting.
Compass
Design a personal learning portfolio. Each quarter, pick a subject outside your domain—astronomy, pottery or Swahili—and set a milestone such as a night‑sky sketch, glazed bowl or greeting conversation. Treat public libraries like co‑working spaces; the hum of inquiry is contagious. Subscribe to one newsletter that annoys you into broader perspective, then debate its ideas with friends over tea. Visit local museums and read placards in full because context turns artefacts into time machines. Curiosity is muscle memory for hope; the more you stretch it, the further you can imagine.
21 · Grief & Loss
The Terrain
Visa delays keep you from bedside farewells, and funerals live‑streamed over shaky Wi‑Fi feel like bad dream theatre—everyone buffered, no one hugged. You learn time‑zone arithmetic so you can speak at 3 a.m. when family gathers in daylight around the coffin. Elders quote “no one can question God,” yet questions stalk you anyway: Why so soon? Why this person? Abroad, colleagues expect productivity after two compassionate‑leave days, while back home aunties debate which relative kept the deceased from hospital in time. Grief leaks into everyday rituals: you stir jollof and remember their laughter, you board a bus and expect their call. Loss is borderless, but mourning still obeys culture—black clothes here, white cloth there; loud wailing in one village, quiet stoicism in another. In the diaspora you must knit a mourning blanket from mismatched scraps of both worlds.
Compass
Begin by naming the loss out loud; unspoken grief grows heavier. Mark a personal mourning ritual—light a candle at dawn for forty days, recite a psalm at dusk, share one memory each week with a trusted friend. If distance prevents burial attendance, compose a letter to the departed and burn or bury it locally; ashes and soil are messengers that understand geography. Do not rush “closure”; the heart metabolises sorrow at its own pace. Accept food from neighbours and deadlines from work only when your body consents. Seek grief‑literate counselling or a church bereavement group; shared language eases private ache. When faith platitudes feel thin, pray the psalms of lament—proof that doubt and devotion can kneel together. Honour the departed through living legacy: fund a scholarship, plant a tree, finish the degree they cheered you toward. And when joy returns, welcome it without guilt—every smile is testimony that love outlives death.
22 · Courage & Hope
The Terrain
Headlines tally wars, layoffs and heat waves; hope feels naïve and courage expensive. Parents whisper worst‑case scenarios while friends joke about apocalypse kits. Faith traditions remind us that resurrection follows tombs and morning follows night. Courage is not lack of fear but commitment to walk headlong anyway.
Compass
Anchor hope in micro‑acts: plant herbs on your windowsill, volunteer at local shelters, draft a policy proposal. Record testimonies of previous breakthroughs such as visas finally approved or health scares resolved; they remind us that despair is a faulty prophet. Practise courage scaffolding: start with uncomfortable conversations, graduate to public stands. Surround yourself with possibility people who ask why not more often than what if it fails. Nourish the spirit with stories of resistance from Harriet Tubman to Nelson Mandela; history bends when confronted by persistent light. Hope is a discipline; rehearse it daily until the future takes note.
Epilogue: Writing the Next Chapter
No manifesto can script your life. These reflections are windows, not walls. Fill the margins with proverbs, jokes, scars and songs. When elders ask, “Who do you think you are?” answer with a grin: “A work in progress, and that is enough.”
May your compass stay true, your feet find rhythm and your story widen the world.
Magic!!! 👏🏾👏🏾 ✨
Your pen game, my God👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻