Hallo!

After a recent trip to Germany, I've have now resolved to saying that at any given opportunity. I am thoroughly enjoying it!

How are you all? It has been a while, I know, but I'm back and I'm better! Well I hope so...otherwise what are we really doing here?

So in this blog post I thought I'd discuss something that has pretty much plagued me half my life. As you may have guessed by now I'm Nigerian. Someone posed an interesting question on twitter, that has still got me thinking...

Do you identify more with your race, your nationality or your heritage? - I'm just paraphrasing but essentially this was the question asked.

Like many people I know, I grew up in the UK. My accent is as English as they come, when you live in a place as culturally diverse as London you can't help but pick 'traits' from the cultures you surround yourself with. So I really struggled to answer this question, I genuinely don't know. Growing up I had a Bangladeshi best friend, my "boyfriend" (I was only 8) was white and I was surrounded with people of all races. That didn't take away from my ethnicity, it didn't make me any less of a Nigerian...or so I thought.

So let's fast forward to 13 year old me, out and about socialising with friends and someone says to me "Why are you so white?" That was the first time I had ever heard anything like that addressed to me, so naturally I didn't know what to say. All I could do was laugh and shrug it off.
That brings me to my next point, the 'Diluted Nigerian' a term coined by my younger sister in an attempt to explain why I am the way I am. You're Nigerian but you're not really Nigerian.

See, I don't know what one would call the main attributes of a 'typical Nigerian' as these things could be applied to any race. However, whatever made up these attributes could not be applied to me henceforth the 'Diluted Nigerian'. I'm not a fan of most Nigerian food, I don't speak any Nigerian language, I don't behave like a Nigerian girl...I don't look Nigerian...I dunno...

Since that life awakening moment at 13, it was years of "you speak like a white person", "you act like a proper white person you know", "you're so white" YAWN!
I'm well spoken. I will skelewu till my limbs fall off but can also spend the day listening to the likes of Erik Satie and Tchaikovsky. I can spend the whole day eating Jollof rice and plantain but I really wanna make the most perfect Hollandaise sauce to accompany my poached eggs an I would like to try consommé one day.
Are these the attributes that make me white? Hell no!

I have many Ghanaian friends that I spend a lot of time with, so naturally I believe I'm Ghanaian sometimes ha! I spent 3 days in Germany and once I left all I wanted to do was speak fluent German. I guess you could say I'm impressionable but hey, what are you gonna do? Meh!

I am Chanel, a British-born Nigerian, I speak Spanish pretty well, I have a basic understanding of Italian and Portuguese and I'm looking to take up British Sign Language. I'm going to take up some snow-boarding lessons  in a couple of weeks and I'm pretty excited about that!

This is me, world! *gets ready to sing a big dance number*