I was going to live out my life in a home that reminded me of the loss of home and a school that offered shelter but not the certainty of home. Both, ironically, were colonial constructs, but I feared that even they might clash at any moment and crush my dreams.

I did ache when I said goodbye to the friends I’d made. I ached when I said goodbye to my grandparents, to my cousins, to my aunts, to my mother. I ached for lasting connection, for a place where rejection was not inevitable. No matter how many times I stood on bare floors, surrounded by blank walls, telling myself I belonged everywhere and to everyone, emptied houses never stopped feeling like ruin. Failing to fully belong in my father’s family, and my mother’s, never stopped feeling like disgrace.

You are deceiving me, abi?’ I followed him to the door, grappling for words to tell him I did not really want to fight with him, to explain that I was afraid that he would leave me and I would be all alone in the world again. ‘Akin, God will deceive you, I promise you. God will deceive you the way you are deceiving me.

The House at 6001 - Lebo Diseko

“Frankly, I was overwhelmed. I recorded a voice note to myself to help process and store an unedited version of my feelings. Months later I listened back to it and heard my voice break as I said, ‘They were just babies.

Lebo, you’re really more British than African.’ It was an observation rather than a criticism, but it landed in my ears and my heart as a questioning of my identity and my efforts. I detected, or perhaps projected, something else too: the belief that exiles had things easier because they had chosen to leave. It may be that there are people who have navigated this more deftly than I did, without all the pain and anxiety. I wish that had been my experience too.