Special to USAfricaonline.com, the first US-based, Africa-owned newspaper published on the Internet
We Came Different Ways, But We Carry the Same Flame: Where the Ancestors Still Speak and the Village Lives On.
A few days ago, of June 2025, I watched a video that brought me to tears.
It wasn’t dramatic. Just a man an African American speaking his heart in a quiet voice that somehow carried centuries.
He spoke of trauma inherited like a surname. Of fathers who could not father because they were never allowed to feel. Of men who walk through life armored, emotionally distant, carrying wounds they did not choose. His pain was honest, his grief ancestral.
And as I listened, I wept not because I’ve lived his experience, but because I recognized something deeper. The ache of disconnection. The fatigue of being misunderstood. The quiet scream of longing to belong to self, to history, to something greater.
I am Igbo. Nigerian. But I was born in Germany. My parents left home with scholarships in hand, chasing dreams through doctoral degrees in foreign lands. They migrated by choice, but choice doesn’t shield you from homesickness or the quiet violence of becoming “other.”
So, I have lived in-between.
Not African American, yet Black in America. Not German, yet born under its sky. Not wholly Western, but shaped by its rhythm. I’ve had to translate my name, my food, my soul. I’ve had to remember who I am, again and again.
This is what drew me to that man’s voice. Different journey, same hunger. A hunger for rootedness. For restoration. For truth.
Here is what I know: we all carry something, our roots….
African Americans carry the wound of forced removal the severing of name, land, and lineage.
Africans in diaspora carry the ache of distance of watching tradition slip between calendar days and career ladders.
Immigrants of every shade carry the weight of duality of proving, explaining, straddling borders both physical and emotional.
But there is healing when we remember.
We remember through our food.
Through the fire of pepper soup. The comfort of egusi. The joy of nkwobi and isi ewu passed around a table where laughter softens grief. Through amala dipped in ewedu, groundnut soup that reminds us of mother’s hands, banga that tastes like rain-soaked evenings in the village.
We remember through music.
Flavour’s praise, Davido’s pulse, Fela’s rebellion.
Bob Marley’s truth, Chimamanda’s story telling and the ancient folk songs that rocked us to sleep. Each melody is a memory. Each drumbeat, a heartbeat.
We remember through community.
In alumni meetings, village WhatsApp groups, unplanned visits, and long conversations over jollof.
We remember that success is not silence, that independence should not cost intimacy, that no promotion is worth cultural amnesia.
Let us not forget that we are more than where we live or what we’ve achieved.
Let us not forget that we are not better only different shades of the same longing.
Let us not forget that our power lies in connection.
This is not about who suffered more. This is about us Black people across oceans, united by rhythm, resilience, and the right to joy.
We are not each other’s opposition. We are mirrors. We are medicine.
So sit with your brother. Listen to your sister. Share the soup, play the music, tell the story. You don’t have to have the same scar to be family.
We heal when we remember together.
We rise when we remain connected.
Stay rooted.
Stay open.
Stay one.
Jisike.
