The church was where I had my political awakening. For nearly five years, weekly sermons, prayer sessions and testimonies, gave me an education, about being African in the UK, that I couldn’t get in school.
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London, United Kingdom
I’d been looking forward to wearing my kente dress all week. It was the first time since moving to the UK that I’d gone to a tailor and sewn an ‘African dress’. For six years, I’d been embarrassed by all the clothes I’d brought with me from Ghana. Maybe because it was too much colour for a grey and dull city like London. Or maybe I didn’t want to stand out more than I already did.
It was a thanksgiving celebration at Zion Hill’s Ministries, an evangelical church that my parents began in our living room in Barking. In just five years, the church had grown from eight people to 60; had become a cherished space of comfort for African immigrants in the Barking and Dagenham communities of East London, expanding to occupy a hall space at the town’s leisure centre. For my family, we had a reason to celebrate: earlier that week, we had received our British passports. After a five-year journey, we were finally British citizens.
The author at a church event. © EILEEN GBAGBO
