Ngozi

Ngozi Fulani

My parent’s came to London from the Caribbean and most of their children were born here. Seven children, and we were the only black family on our road. Our house was like Liverpool Street Station. The barriers that we faced outside were never brought into the house and my mum and dad embraced everybody. They taught us to be proud of who we are.

My mum Mildred was very strong, but she was only five feet. She was tiny. She first worked for London Transport and then trained as a nurse. My dad Gladstone Headley was a tall, powerful man, who worked in the daytime for ‘British Rail’ and his voice was as crunchy as I don’t know what. He was a sound system man, a ‘sound man’ them call it and he had big, big speaker boxes. Our lives were about him moving around, Moving around playing music at house parties, because we were not allowed in main venues. Black people were not allowed. No dogs, No Blacks, No Irish. We had to cram people in rooms in house parties, and we were very aware from the get-go that even though we were born here, we were not welcome.

My dad was a very conscious man and taught me about my connection to Africa. He came in one day and he told me about Nigeria’s Fela Ransom Kuti. We did not know African music. We had Caribbean Calypso, Reggae, Soca, Ska, Skalite everything. But it was through Fela that my dad gave a direct connection to Africa. They came here because this country promised them the world and they did not come here on a stowaway ship or anything. Britain went to the Caribbean, asked people to come over and then brought them here and treated them so bad. The shock. It was cold and most people say they had never seen snow and never known such cold, but most of all they had never known such hostility.

We lived in Kilburn and on our road, Plympton Road, it was predominately Irish. The Irish were so good to us and we were so good to them, because we were both oppressed. But as a youngster you don’t know, all I knew is we were not allowed in Asian people’s houses or white people’s houses, but the Irish let us in. We didn’t understand because we were too young to understand that being black was the barrier in us going into their houses. And that is something that isn’t spoken about today. Everyone likes to have this new re-written history about how BAME communities always got on and so on and so forth, absolute crap. One thing I will not do is re-write my history to make it palatable for anyone else. I will not do that, so I’m telling you. We were not accepted by most other cultures, but the Irish, we just had a commonality and we always felt that. Where other people were telling their kids, go to school, look left and right, they had the Green Cross Code then and all those things there. Our parents would tell us that, but our parents would tell us we also had to be aware of other cultures, who didn’t like us. Our parents gave us that warning, “When you go outside, try and keep your head down, other people don’t like you. “They didn’t tell us that directly, they couldn’t. I don’t think they could form the words. How do tell your children that? So, they had to find a way to make that clear to us.

I remember my first year at secondary school, they had a teacher called Miss Limb. She was a white, blonde lady who looked like Lucille Ball. She would have her hair all up and wear frilly dresses. We were all sitting on the floor together and she was calling the register and she started shooing us, “Get away, Get away.” There is something in Black culture, across the culture, that if you’re running from something, you run and you ask questions later. Anyway, me and the other kids, we scrambled away from Miss Limb. And then I realised it was me. I was too close to her. I must have been about eleven…I didn’t get it yeah. I didn’t know it was because I was Black. I didn’t get it.

I saw the racism on TV, when we were children, ‘Tarzan and Jane’, when white men would go to Africa and conquer all the Black people. Love Thy Neighbours, Nig nogs and all they had something called a Golliwog, so they called us wogs and asked us if we just escaped from the marmalade jar. So, this lie they told about how things were back in the day, it’s a lie. Black children knew from early, if their parents either told them or they had to figure it out, one way or the other, we knew. The programme ‘Roots’ is how I found out how I got here, how I found out how the rest of the world sees us. Police beating Black people was a national sport. Police will not talk about this. I don’t know anyone over the age of fifty who had siblings or parents who hasn’t experienced police brutality. Groups of police would go out and beat Black people to hell. My brothers came home from school with their faces swollen. People here held contempt for us, and they still do.

Back then when black people first arrived here, there was no benefit system, no housing support, nothing like that, so they had a different journey. My dad and mum would come to the school and defend us against everything. Because them times, teacher could hit you with a cane and a bat. They could whip your legs and men could hit your backside. The men could pull down your pants or pull up your skirt and hit you. They could get away with it. My twin sister had her first child at seventeen and a social worker got involved. Anything they don’t understand, they bring social services in. The social worker came to the house and called my nephew a ‘sambo’ and that’s when I knew the system is worse than I had even thought. Back in the day, there were white social workers, teachers and doctors. There were no Black people in those positions - as leaders. When we were growing up, there was no representation of us. Everything was white, everything clean was white and everything bad was Black. As a young woman, I would ask why does this keep happening? What is it?

I left home and got my own small place when I was eighteen. That was when I moved to Hackney. I remember going to college at eighteen to do Community Studies. They had an African dance group - that was the day my life changed. A pivotal moment, because it was a connection with Africa and put me in touch with Africans from the continent. One rehearsal with them and that was me. To hear Africans with strong accents, learn about the food and the drumming touched my heart and took me to a place I had never been. It was everything for me and I had never felt so free as when I was listening to those drums. It was all so beautiful, the clothes, the beads, the cowrie shells, and the stories. My connection with Africa became my lifelong story. It’s identity, because ours was robbed from us. Overtime, Black people have been forced to try and be something they are not.

I have taught African dance since I was twenty-three. I was a resident teacher in Hackney for twenty years. With my African dance experience, I went on to run Emashi Dance ensemble for many years. I taught traditional African dance and folklore. We took young people to Africa every year to learn about their culture and their roots. I did all of this whilst meeting my partner and having my children. It was also important to me that my own children visited Africa. I wanted them to see it for themselves rather than the stereotypical images of starving children with flies around their mouths living in huts. That was a white perspective. I wanted to share my culture with them in my way because the narrative had always come from people who don’t look like us or understand us or often don’t like us. I would like to think that I have had input into making different cultures understand us. Often people speak for us, so I try to be very clear-speaking and truthful. Anyone who knows me, knows I will not intentionally try to hurt someone but if my truth causes offence, then I’m okay with that. I try to lead by example and be my authentic self hence my locks and my beautiful chocolate skin. It’s still an evolving journey, because some of the barriers I faced come from within our community. The truth is we have to be visible in order to say it’s okay to be your authentic self.

I also have a Batchelors degree and a masters in ‘African Studies’ from SOAS (School of African Studies). I felt that my Master’s degree put me into a colonial environment and this was from 1996 – 1999. There were five Black people in my class. It did not feel authentic and at times I found it traumatic. The heads of most of the departments were nearly all white. Don’t get me wrong, they were good to me. But there was something wrong as we had to learn about our own culture from middle class white people. Black people were not getting into academic circles because the colonialism is about control and keeping Black people subservient. That is my Truth. There were a few Black academics, they had Dr Adi teaching Yoruba and two other Black lecturers but everyone else who was teaching, was white. It was at this point I realised how much trouble we were in and how far we had to go.

My journey has been and is a collective, holistic one. Those things that pitched other cultures against each other and pitched people of African heritage against each other, the education system that told the lie of Christopher Columbus and the lying history of colonialism. All those things were and continue to be a journey that I am on. They’re in every element of my life. I want to set an example for those coming up and the older ones. I have a debt to them that I cannot pay because they shielded us from so much. What they had to and continue to endure and the Windrush scandal sums up the continuation of their struggle. Nothing has changed. It’s just different. The racism is just as intense, the hate is still there. I keep my truth.

Ngozi and Rosanna run @sistahspace in Hackney. A safe space and support network for African and Caribbean heritage women and girls who have suffered domestic or sexual abuse.