Dear sweet African students abroad, don’t forget your home

Studying abroad exposes African students to new cultures, languages and opportunities that can transform their lives.
Yet global education should enrich rather than erase their languages, values, food and connection to home.
Enock Okong’o urges African students abroad to embrace new knowledge while remaining firmly connected to their African identity.

There is a story we must hold close. It is best understood as a parable rather than a documented historical event. It tells of two Germans who met in space. One wore a Russian uniform and spoke Russian. The other wore an American uniform and spoke English. For a long time, they could not understand each other because their work and their flags had placed them in different worlds. Then one morning, at the same small table, one of them looked up and asked, “Shall we speak German?” And in that moment, they found each other again. Not in Russian, not in English, but in German. The language of their mothers, their grandmothers and their home.

When Africans later sat together in a meeting to talk about who we are, an elder told them this story. He said this is us. New books came. New songs came. New ways came. Sometimes they pulled us apart. But we are still here. We are still black, on our African continent. Our blood has not changed. Our land has not moved. Our names are still carried by our children.

My dear students abroad, this is for you. You have gone far to study. You are in London and Toronto, in Berlin and Boston and Dubai. You are learning medicine and engineering, law and technology. That is a good and proud thing. Education is meant to open our eyes and to help us live with comfort and dignity.

Remember where you came from

But do not let learning make you forget the voice that first called you home. Remember Obi Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease. Obi went to England to study. During his four years there, he developed a strong longing for home and sought opportunities to speak Igbo. Yet when he returned to Nigeria, he found himself caught between the traditions of his people and the Western influences that had shaped his education. His experience reminds us that education abroad can broaden a person’s world while also creating difficult questions about identity, belonging and home.

That is the path we pray you will navigate wisely: gaining from the world without losing your connection to where you came from.

Speak your language even in quiet rooms. Teach a friend how to say good morning in Swahili, in Igbo, in Shona, in Wolof. Do not allow English or French or Mandarin to be the only sound in your mouth.

Cook your food and share it. Yes, taste pasta and burgers, but also cook ugali and fufu and chinsaga and jollof and injera. Let your kitchen smell like home. Invite people to sit with you. Culture moves on a plate, and it rises with the steam from the pot.

Carry your values with you

Carry your values with you. The way we greet elders with respect. The way we share what little we have. The way we sit in a circle and talk until a problem is solved. The world needs that softness and that strength.

Do not trade it for hurry and competition. And whether you return physically, or you reach back with ideas and skills and support, do not cut the rope that ties you to home. You are a bridge. You are an ambassador.

Let education add to you, not subtract from you. Let your degree give you more ways to be African, not fewer. The world will teach you new languages and new ways of seeing life, and you should learn them well. But never forget the language of home. Never forget your African way.