A Place of Longing

Hamburg has always held a special meaning for me, even as a child. Hamburg wasn’t just the place my parents commuted to every day from the small town I grew up in. It was also a place where many people who looked like me (non-white) lived. Of course, there were also Black people from Congo, Ghana or Nigeria in my small town. But there were no lavishly stocked Afro stores, no loud and joyful church services, no festivals with pulsating music and mountains of spicy food. There was no Black community like the one I came to know in Hamburg when my parents visited friends from Zimbabwe.

I have spent a long time thinking about how to describe this longing that has often overwhelmed me since early childhood. I find it hard to put into words. I can’t explain why, at such an early age, I longed so deeply for my Black father’s “compatriots” when I could just as easily have settled for my white mother’s family (to whom I am very close). Perhaps, at 4, 5 or 6 years old – before I even had the words for it – I already sensed that, to some, I didn’t quite belong, or didn’t belong at all. I was probably searching for a place with people where it felt different. And even though Hamburg is not a perfect, discrimination-free place, I may have found a piece of that sense of belonging here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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