“NOT AS BROKEN, NOT AS PERFECT"

She was nine years old.Old enough to notice difference.Young enough not to fully understand it.She grew up far from the country of her heritage—raised instead in a land where her skin stood out, where her middle and last name sounded unfamiliar, where the language on her tongue was not the one her parents carried in their bones.Out there, it was Dutch.At home, it was Igbo and English—woven together in conversations, discipline, laughter.She understood Igbo perfectly. Every word. Every tone.But when she tried to speak it, it sat heavy on her tongue, like it belonged to someone braver.She saw things early, too early.The quiet looks.The loud assumptions.The strange place of being both seen and unseen at the same time.She learned what racism felt like before she even knew the word for it.Still, she found joy.She got sick , sick enough to end up in a hospital, but she survived. And when she came out, she didn’t come out bitter. She came out still smiling, still reaching for friendship, still choosing light where she could find it.That was who she was.She loved her life.Her friends.Her routines.The cold air. The snow. The familiarity of everything she knew.So when her parents said they were leavingnot visiting, not traveling, but leaving—she didn’t understand.There was no real explanation.Just a decision.And suddenly, her world, her entire world, was packed into bags.The flight was long.She remembers Paris, the brief glimpse of the Eiffel Tower standing in the distance like something from a storybook.And then… Nigeria.Abuja.The moment she stepped out, the heat wrapped around her like something alive. Her sweaters and hoodies, once essentials—became useless overnight.But the heat wasn’t what struck her most.It was the people.Everywhere she looked, she saw faces like hers. Skin like hers.For the first time, she thought:Maybe this is where I belong. It didn’t take long for new experiences to flood in.The first time she tasted soaked garri, she and her siblings screamed with delight. It became something close to obsession—a simple meal that felt like dessert, something she craved even when her parents tried to limit it.Life began again.School came next.Academically, it was tougher than expected.Socially, it was easier—at first.English became her anchor. Igbo floated around her—at home, in passing conversations, in fragments she slowly gathered.She began to understand something bigger: her parents’ language wasn’t small. It wasn’t just theirs. It was part of something vast—one of the major cultures in Nigeria.There were many like her.More than she had ever imagined back in Belgium.And slowly, quietly, something else began to fade.Dutch.It wasn’t forced out—it just… disappeared.No one spoke it.No one needed it.And so her mind let it go.What remained was an accent—a soft echo of a life she once lived. Not fully foreign, not fully local. Just… hers.She didn’t mind.Not at first.But growing up has a way of sharpening awareness.By the time she entered junior secondary school, difference became louder.Her pronunciation.Her unfamiliarity with Nigerian songs.Her way of speaking.It became something to laugh at.So she adapted.She learned the songs.She adjusted her speech.She reshaped herself just enough to belong.And she endured.But then came the questions.“Why did you leave?”“You’re so lucky.”“Why would you come here?”Each one landed heavier than the last.Because the truth was—she didn’t have an answer.Not one she fully understood.As she grew older, she began to see what others saw:the insecurity, the poverty, the inflation, the corruption.She saw why people spoke of “abroad” like it was salvation.Why they treated her past like a prize she had thrown away.And slowly, dangerously, something shifted in her.The place she once called home began to feel like a lost paradise.The struggles she had known there faded.The flaws of her present became louder.She wanted to go back.Badly.But time does something important—it teaches balance, whether you’re ready or not.And she learned.She learned that no place is perfect.That every country carries both beauty and brokenness.That memory has a way of softening one side while sharpening the other.She learned to see clearly.Nigeria wasn’t just hardship.It was music that moved through your bones.It was food that tasted like history and home.It was resilience, loud laughter, deep community, and lessons no classroom could teach.And the country of her birth?It wasn’t just comfort.It held its own struggles—just quieter, dressed differently.In the end, she understood something simple, but powerful:She didn’t belong to one place.She carried both.Two worlds.Two cultures.Two versions of home.And neither one took away from the other.Because what made them both meaningful—what made them both worth loving—was the same thing:Love lived in both places.And so did she. This was written to remind us that one world may look more perfect than the other but they each have trials and struggles and issues and both shaped me, the experiences here in Nigeria remove the bad are so lovely the people, the language, the community, the food even our struggles shape our culturea and make us one of a kind.Do I love being Nigerian?Yes 💯Do you?

Other insights from Stacy📚🌹

Referral Earning

Points-to-Coupons