For many Black people in the diaspora like me, disconnection from ancestral homelands is a structural inheritance of slavery and colonialism. Growing up in Lisbon, I felt the real impact of language gaps, fragmented histories and the constant need to describe oneself.

But travelling through different regions, I have encountered societies that, despite their internal contradictions and injustices, are deeply anchored in land, language, and collective memory. Witnessing that rootedness forced me to confront my own relationship to identity and belonging as someone from the African diaspora.

Roaming through Morocco, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Colombia, Cape Verde, and Brazil taught me much more about the diversity and internal complexity of African and Black cultures. Struck by each destination, experiencing these nations challenged any tendency to see Blackness as a single narrative or Africa as a singular place. Each context carried its own histories, fractures, and continuities. And what connected them right before my eyes was depth.