I was just watching a FashionistaGh upload ‘Glimpses of Kumasi, Ghana‘ and it brought an intense feeling of nostalgia from when I last visited Ghana. When I think of all the little nuances common to Ghana and it’s people I sometimes think I’ve missed out on something in having not been brought up there. I often think to myself what would my life have been like had I grown up in Ghana?
And it’s a question I often discuss with my friends. Have we gained something or lost out on something in becoming children of the Diaspora? African by heritage, but not by nationality or locality.
Growing up, my dad loved telling us about his boarding school days and his “chop box”, aka a massive trunk filled with special types of food your mum leaves you with as a parting gift at the beginning of each school term. As he spoke I would wish that I too could have experienced that life. But now that I’m much older I ask myself, would I have traded the experiences I did have growing up in Australia to instead grow up in Ghana?
I wish I could have grown up with my grandparents, cousins, aunties and uncles a ten minute drive away rather than a 30 hour plane trip away. I wish my culture could have been in my face at every corner I turned, that I could speak my mother dialect fluently and that I could have those shared experiences one only has growing up in Africa. But in the same vein I truly love being Aussie and everything I’ve experienced trying to navigate between two cultures. And God only knows why we were destined to be children of the Diaspora.
So I throw this question to all my fellows in the Diaspora, If you were given the choice would you have grown up in Africa?
Here’s the clip that took me down memory lane:
SOURCE: FashionistaGh
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