Tukeni Teejay Obasi: Coming of Age as an African Diaspora Youth

We all have those conversations in university that we summon from the recesses of our memory from time to time, like a ruminant, calling them forth, chewing them again and sending them back to the darkness to be re-summoned when the need arises. The one where your friend asks you how many pet lions you have in your home in Africa, and the one where a friend invites you to watch a movie with her and then goes on to ask you if you’ve ever been to a movie theatre before. And as you struggle address the expressions of ignorance your ‘Western’ friends constantly spawn, as you struggle to explain that English is your first language and that you have skyscrapers in your country, a pool and not a pet lion in your backyard, you realize that the ‘truth’ is not as simple as you thought it was. It becomes more complicated when one ‘Western’ friend travels to Ghana to build a school for poor children and another spends a summer in South Africa caring for orphans whose parents had died of AIDS. You realize that amidst the jeeps and society parties, amidst the designer clothes your friends at home are constantly sporting, your country, your continent is struggling. Feeling trapped abroad and somewhat guilty for enjoying the luxuries of a Western education, you, no doubt influenced by Western rhetoric, ask yourself: “What can I do to help?”

Your previous die-hard mission of only a moment ago- your mission of fighting ignorance and racial stereotypes and proving your worth among your peers- becomes forgotten, overtaken by this new quasi-activist mission. For some, this mission is urgent: I’ll join a student group next week and raise money to fight against AIDS. When I go home next Christmas, I’ll ask my parents what I can do to help. Because I need to help. Because I can’t sit back and keep enjoying life while ‘my people’ suffer. For others, this mission is a futuristic one: When I make it in life, I’ll sponsor less-privileged children; I’ll do something good for my country. When I graduate, I’ll go back home because my country needs me. But right now, while this plan is brewing, there isn’t much I can do. I have to focus on my studies. I have to wait. I have to wait.

It doesn’t cross your mind that your very first turn was a wrong turn, that the choice of the word ‘help’ has sent you down a different alley, and that this mission has more to do with guilty and pity than with anything else. You don’t realize that you’ve bought into those stereotypes, fed them, internalized them and have begun to live them, seeing your ‘fellow people’ as missions. It doesn’t cross your mind that your perspective is wrong.

Several years later, during one of those epiphanies we are all bound to have every now and then, it hits you. You realize that the operative word is ‘engagement’, a word that reminds you of the concept of civil society- engaging with governments and institutions, engaging with fellow citizens, engaging with yourself, making sure that the needs of the people are brought to the fore, holding leaders accountable. But you realize that engagement is not a mission; it’s a lifestyle, a learning process. When you learn about that cutting- edge technology that has already gained a foothold in your country, when you listen to that leader who started an agricultural cooperative for the farmers in his village, when you lie on your bed and read a novel written by that popular African writer and find yourself laughing at that stupid character or find that you can relate to all the major themes in the story because you grew up in Kenya or Burkina Faso or Eritrea, you know that it can’t be a mission. When you discuss politics or economics with your friends, listening to the ideas spewing forth, refuting them, learning from them, you realize that it’s a lifestyle. In your petro-engineering class, while your teacher is talking about gas flaring, you find yourself drawing comparisons between your notes and the realities of the oil industry in the Niger Delta. You’re becoming more informed; you’re discovering yourself, and you know you’re on the right path.

Sometimes the engagement leads you to a startup: a magazine, a business venture, a youth group. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it leads you to vote, to sign a petition, to compose a song, to start blogging. Sometimes, it doesn’t. But all the time, it humbles you and it uplifts you; it gets you asking questions, finding answers, renouncing previously-held beliefs, adopting new ones. Sometimes you’re stuck; sometimes you’ve never been more certain. Sometimes, you despair and at other times, there’s that resurgence of hope which restores your faith in everything.

You’re in the Diaspora and the people at home are no longer objects or subjects but agents of their own cause- creating, destroying, fighting, resisting, winning, losing, cheating, being as honest and accountable as they can be. They become as real as you are. There’s no more mission because you realize that every citizen has rights as well as responsibilities and that you are really just a part of a composite whole. You realize that you are no savior but that you can find a niche, or two, or three and thrive. You realize that you can be true to yourself, that you can support initiatives or learn from them.

You have changed: you talk less; you listen more; you’re meeting experts, novices, veterans; you’re showing respect; you’re earning respect. You are engaged. You’ve never felt happier, stronger, more involved. And those feelings of helplessness, those thoughts that left you feeling like a hostage in an unknown territory? They are gone with the wind! Your world is now full of possibilities. Your vision knows no limits. You realize that there’s no cape. It’s a ring. You’re engaged and the wedding bells are ringing.

Tagged as: diaspora, engage, Nigeria, Youth assets