Coconut

by Florence Olajide

With no soap and water at school for hygiene, you used your left hand for sanitation and not much else. Therefore, handing someone something using your left hand was considered an abomination. As for left-handed people, there was no place for them in society. The urge was often beaten out of them before they reached school age.

Here I was, in a country full of people who looked just like me. I should be one of them, but I wasn’t. I felt different; they knew I was different, and if I didn’t fit in here, where exactly did I fit in?

The culture wanted children to be invisible. I wanted to be heard. I was coming to the stark realisation that no matter how hard I tried, I would never fit in.

The awareness that my existence was temporarily suspended in a world of make-believe that wouldn’t last left me ambivalent and at odds with myself.

The uniformity baffled me. In a country that celebrated individuality, why did almost every building and every street look similar?

Aside from the odd looks, I hadn’t experienced any racism in London, but I wasn’t blind to the fact that my colour set me apart. Even Nan called me coloured and she loved me.

I couldn’t blame the child. Her exuberance simply reflected her daily existence in which seeing a Black family was a rarity. But how much of that could we endure, and how well would my children cope?

Four-fifths of my pupils were Black, many of those Yoruba, and I wondered how they fared, navigating the quagmire between Yoruba and British culture. Perhaps I had a real opportunity to help them in ways others couldn’t. It was time for the coconut to nourish others.

I didn’t know what my future held or how many more proverbial glass ceilings I’d happen upon. But I knew if I hit my head against glass hard enough, it would crack, and my bruises would heal. It had been a long journey of discovery and somewhere along the way, I found myself. I am Black, I am Yoruba, I am British, I am me, Coconut.