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The Tension between being British and Nigerian

I don't know what I felt as a child, but it wasn't British. While my friends' parents were rustling up fish fingers, chips and peas for a prompt tea at 5.30pm, my mum was moulding fluffy mounds of ground rice to accompany a steaming bowl of red stew – eaten with your hands, naturally – for 8 o'clock.

 For me, the epitome of Africanness was a wood-mounted print of two elephants in warm tones that suggested a tropical sun; the epitome of Britishness were holidays in Weston Super Mare and a nan that lived a road or two away, instead of a six hour plane journey in the direction of the Equator. I fell between the cracks of these two identities and proclaimed myself from a young age to be nationless: suspended over an ocean somewhere, hoping not to drown in the chasm of difference.