“You’ve started working now so it should be at the back of your mind to build and prepare for your future. I know you have grown up here, but this country is not for us and someday we will all go back home. All these projects you see me coordinating from here, I don’t just do it for fun.

“This is for you as my children and for me so that when I retire, I can do so peacefully knowing that I have things to my name. It is never too late to start thinking about your future, so I encourage you to do the same, my child,” my father repeatedly told me.

For any diaspora kid, these words are not something new, rather a generational normalisation of repatriation for African and Caribbean communities. In 2020, studies showed that remittance provides Africa with more than US$60 billion a year – much of which was used for familial support but also a large part of which would be used for personal and communal investments.

Therefore, I knew it was a coming-of-age passage to invest back home but I always knew that when that time came, I wanted to avoid the mistakes and defrauding I had witnessed several family members go through, by other family members.