This is Part 1 of a three-part series exploring the idea of “home” in the diaspora. These are mainly personal reflections and pieces of conversations with friends.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about home.

Maybe it’s because of the conversations I’ve been having with my friends, all of us scattered across the world, all of us building new lives elsewhere.

One of them came to Germany about nine months ago. Recently, he visited France and was completely thrown off by how people were crossing the street on red lights. He laughed, half-angry, half-baffled:

“In my heart, I was so angry… I think I’m becoming German.”

We both laughed.

Where we come from, traffic lights are more like gentle suggestions, a thing you notice but don’t always obey. But now he found himself upset when people ignored the rules. Something had shifted.

Germany — orderly, structured, predictable — had begun to feel like home.

The quiet signs of belonging

That’s how belonging often begins: not with big changes, but with tiny habits sneaking into your bones.

You start queuing automatically.
You say “tschüss” without thinking.
You start checking the weather forecast obsessively.
You get annoyed when the train is two minutes late (even though where you’re from, two hours is normal).

These are small things, but they carry a deep truth: You are starting to belong.

But Is It Belonging… or Just Survival?

Still, I often wonder — and I know many others in the diaspora do too:

Are we belonging because we want to?
Or because we have to?

At first, most of what looks like “belonging” is really survival:

Learning the language so you can work.
Copying social norms so you won’t stand out.
Following rules so people won’t see you as “less.”

It can feel like wearing a mask — safe… but not quite you.

And yet, somewhere along the way, something softens.
The mask stops feeling like a mask.
You begin choosing parts of this place not out of fear, but out of curiosity, joy, and love.

The rules you once followed just to survive become rhythms you move with naturally.

Belonging vs Betrayal

Sometimes people think feeling at home in a new place means forgetting where you come from, as if loyalty can only live in one place.

They fear that if they start feeling “too comfortable” in their new country,
it will mean they are abandoning their roots.
That building a life here means betraying the life that raised them.

But for me that’s not true.

Belonging is not betrayal.

Loving where you are now doesn’t erase the place you came from.
It doesn’t cancel your childhood, your mother tongue, or the love you have for your parents.

Becoming “Both”

That’s the gift (and sometimes the confusion) of life in the diaspora.
You end up with two homes.

The first is the one you were born into, the one with the smells of childhood cooking, the sound of your mother tongue, the beliefs and traditions.

The second is the one you slowly grow into, the one where you learn new rules, stumble through a new language, make friends who become family, and wake up one day realizing… this place feels like mine too.

And yet, it’s not simple.
Because sometimes you feel suspended between worlds —
too African to be fully accepted here,
too changed to be fully understood there.

…..Upcoming post: Far From Sight, Close to the Heart – Homesickness