Irish | Nigerian

I was born in North London and I am proud of my heritage. My dad never expected to bring up his children in any country other then Nigeria.  Because we lived in the UK he was very conscious of bringing up his mixed race children, so he made sure that I was aware of my cultural background. Dad always made me listen to cultural music and eat the local Nigerian food. I also embrace my Irish culture and visited Ireland during my school holidays.  I did not travel to Nigeria until I was a lot older because my mum was worried about all the injections we had to take before we travelled.

The only place I experienced racism was in Ireland, my granddad at the time found it hard to get past the race issues, he loved his grandchildren, but he did not really appreciate black people in the same way. Recently he has learned to appreciate my Dad, because out of his 9 kids, its only my Dad and Mum are still together.

On my Nigerian side we are very lucky, the fact that in Africa the role of the father is different than for an African Caribbean man in the UK.  There are a lot of different factors which impact on it. How they can play that part and be with their family where as in Nigeria everyone is black and the kind of divisions that you have are class and tribal, so that is where I find the difference comes in.

It is the family values instilled in our home by both my parents, which has made my life culturally rich on both sides.