I went back to Nigeria in February 2022 to shoot those photos. The lack of travelling opportunity during lockdown exacerbates the feeling of exile, and the geographical distance becomes an emotional distance that is impossible to bridge. I came back to document what I would see, what my family would do, capturing colours, temperatures, silhouettes, and the sensory overload that comes with being away from home for a long time. The concept of “home” is elusive and subjective. A home does not have to be a fixed object, a singular place, or person. It can live with you, stay with you, even as you move across space and time. During lockdown, and having lived in Northern Ireland since I was 10, I’ve been reconsidering the idea of what I considered to be home. Is it simply the most common roof over my head? Is it where my parents are? Is the place where I was asked to stay in for months? Does home have to be where you are, or can it be a place you miss?

Home, to me, is where I feel grounded. Home is where my family is rooted; where we used to thrive, where we are planted, like seeds, like tree branches reaching up, where people look like me, have fun like me, speak the same language, and share a history. Home is where I do not have to explain my name, where I have been, let alone where I am going. While Northern Ireland is where I live, work, have fun, develop and nurture relationships, where I have become an adult, and where I will take flight from, Nigeria feels the closest to who I am as a person. Identity is so deeply personal, and yet is the easiest thing to share. Whilst many of us children of immigration, migration, expatriation, and exile are comfortable or grew comfortable with the idea of distance and multiple identities, this is a photo essay about a shared one that is so far away from my current daily life. Some of those photos were taken in my grandmother’s school. She created a space for all local children to learn and grow, to socialise and appropriate skills. Their games, laughter, their screams, their uniforms and their jokes all felt familiar to me, and the sense of pride I felt upon visiting a place as important as a school knowing it was my family’s work was worth capturing.

Those photos represent innocence and joy, the colours of the sand in the streets and of the plaster on the house’s walls. It’s the muted palette of Africa clashing with the bold navy colours of school uniforms inherited from previous settlers. It is in their joy gathering around my camera, following me around, as I was trying to capture something candid, something transient, that I could otherwise very well miss. Who I am appears on all of those photos. I am those children; those were my childhood activities, too. Those were the days I did not want to go to school; the moments I was waiting for a snack; the times I decided to stay out late and play with my friends in the street. It mattered to me to come back, not just because my grandparents are getting older, but because I am, too. I needed to bridge the distance between who I am and who I have been, so I could become. My Nigerian identity is indistinguishable from any other language I speak or country I work in. This is where I plant my feet, where the colours and the tastes, the smells and the flavours, are what I know. Not what I have learnt, but what I have always known, intuitively.