My sister’s namesake, my aunt Aminata, tells me that “Africans like to be in capitols, the places that are high and mighty,” —she meant any big city that America could offer—Washington, Columbus,1 Dallas, or New York. To me, this makes sense; the big cities are the places stories travel from, where the money flows, and where the people are. Like a dream rising up to the stars and into the minds of refugees and asylum seekers across the world, there is the promise of affluence, diversity, and belonging all too big to be true.
On the east coast of North America, Mid-Atlantic USA, there is Maryland. For a long time, Prince George’s (PG) County was considered the wealthiest black county in the US. Certainly, it is the most populous African American-majority county—a thing I thought was normal for most of my life. Maryland’s relatively high population of Black people stems from, as most things end up stemming from—slavery. Prince George’s had the largest enslaved population in Maryland before the Civil War. The presence of slavery was so rampant, the majority of the population was comprised of the enslaved. Post emancipation proclamation and even later, when Maryland passed State-level emancipation, many African Americans made their way to the urban areas—Baltimore, D.C. —away from the suburbs. Eventually, with the pressures of Jim Crow laws in Southern states, the Great Migration moved six million Black people to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states.
In my hunt to discover why PG is so black, a fact I always knew but never asked why, the only answers I ever found were through a collection of links on the internet and Wikipedia pages tracking the movement of enslaved people on the East Coast. A large number came to Maryland from the states further south because it was closer and cheaper than continuing further north. On June 19, the U.S. Senate passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, incentivizing the allure of Washington, D.C., and the Federal workforce. Ensuring equal hiring, more so than private employers.
I’ve only known PG as my home, even when I felt I was different but couldn’t know why. I looked the same—maybe a little darker from most—but ate food that was different, had parents with accents that were different, knew words from their creole language that didn’t exist in the vernacular of plain english, but in my eyes I was just a child in the sea of other black children stuck in a degree of seperation I couldn’t figure out how to bridge.
**
On the west coast of Africa lies Sierra Leone, abbreviated often as Salone by its immigrants. Its name comes from Sierra Lyoa or “Lion Mountain,” given by a Portuguese explorer who saw the wild hills of the land. It is a smaller country compared to its neighbors and the home of twenty tribes. Its capital, Freetown, was founded as a refuge for repatriated enslaved people by the British government. In 1787, a British abolitionist group, filled of white men, established that colony with 411 poor Black people from London. The wave that followed afterwards was freed enslaved Americans loyal to the British Army in the Revolutionary War, along with exiles from Jamaica.
**
A shift began in the 1970s, as the gentrification of DC pushed Black residents out of the city, and African Americans with rising incomes began leaving Washington D.C. for the suburbs. Along with a 70s court order to desegregate PG County schools, the area became an alluring option for Black families seeking better educational opportunities for their children. As this steady increase continued, a large number of white residents moved out, or in other words, the area experienced a white flight.
As Immigration to the U.S. had a boom in the 1970s, a new group of Sierra Leoneans, mostly students, were granted visas to study at American universities. Some of these students chose to remain in the United States, allowing them to encourage others to follow suit with immigration. Into the 1980s, a rising number of Sierra Leoneans entered the U.S. to escape hardships. This all contributed to PG becoming a majority-Black, affluent suburban community by the 1990s (not to say there is an overwhelmingly large population of Sierra Leoneans in PG that’s mostly reserved for Nigerians—their country is huge). Some continue to pursue education, while others also choose to support family members at home and send remittances, a commonality for a lot of African families—I’ve seen my mother and father continuously do it each year they’ve stayed in America.
In 1976, my aunt Aminata—who I can’t say for certain is my father’s sister—and her husband, a man owning the name Soya, (whether it was his first or last name, my father is unsure; he is not completely sure of his name being Soya. I did not ask my aunt because my father has told me he has since died, and I find it hard to bring painful memories of the past to my family when they suffered so much living through them) came to America for the first time. I learn this over the phone after a conversation with my dad and a follow-up with my aunt to corroborate his story. Soya came to America, went to Harvard, and got his Master’s in Colorado, where their son was born. They didn’t have any family in Colorado, nor did they have many friends, except for one white woman who they bonded with. [ I am unsure if my aunt is from Gambia or from Sierra Leone. I found that around this time, travel between the two was abundant in my family; all the same, I’m sure they came with the wave of students.]
**
Sierra Leone was transferred from company control to that of an official British colony in 1808. From that point on, all new settlers were “re-captives,” slaves rescued from slave ships and emancipated by the Royal Navy, upholding the ban on slavery, slave trading, and capturing outbound slavers. Unlike the U.S. and the late emancipation of Maryland, the British were surprisingly dedicated to the cause of abolishing slavery.
Gradually, Sierra Leone gained independence from Britain, and full Independence was granted in 1961. New Traditions in democratically elected governments became established, and tribes gradually regained the dominant position in politics. In its first few years, much was very successful; their first prime minister was well-liked and dedicated to building a democratic Nation. But his position was short-lived and succeeded by his brother, who was accused of corruption and lost the next election in 1967 to an opposition party, the All People’s Congress. The events leading to the Sierra Leone Civil War start here.
**
The second time Aminata came to America was in 1992. She wanted to move to New York originally, but ultimately settled in Maryland because here, there was family. After Colorado, all signs said go where family is. Her aunt had told her about a man back in Africa who needed her help to immigrate, and they all moved together to DC—her, Soya, their son, and this man—who she now called a friend. They lived together until she moved to the suburbs of Maryland. Now she lives in Montgomery County, the county that mostly borders PG.
My father, at the time of his departure, was in Gambia writing for a newspaper—he mostly worked on ads— when he received a written invitation to come to America. He was well-connected at the embassy, and his picture in the paper helped sell his cause. He was invited by my aunt Aminata, and Soya wrote the initial application; their son was graduating from high school, and she wanted my father there. The man at the embassy who approved his application could’ve given my dad a visa for only three months, but he knew, he knew my father wasn’t coming back. On June 12th, 1996, my dad landed in New York and came to Maryland.
**
The second wave of Sierra Leoneans to the United States was during the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has a Family Reunification category that allows refugees in the U.S. to petition for their parents, spouses, and unmarried children to join them.
I was curious about the origins and the dominoes that fell into place to lead me where I ended up, where my family ended up. I want to follow the strings all the way back to the point of inception and trace them down the line to where they intersect. But I found that every detail didn’t matter.
While politically interesting, it does not matter here the rebels, coups, grasp for power, blood diamonds, and support of corrupt collusions that led to the bloodshed and instability of Sierra Leone for 11 years. I was never told about it, and I’m not quite sure my mother learned about it either. What matters here is that it happened and devastated the country. What matters is the millions of people injured and mangled, the child soldiers stolen, used, and killed. What matters is my mother, living in fear of the rebels coming and killing her and her family. This story of her, I remember deep in my body, her face when she told me about it, and the conviction in her voice that makes this imagery stick with me: my mother holding my older brother in her arms, he is young, a toddler, his face is tightly pressed against the breast of my mother, trying to cover his mouth so that he doesn’t make a sound as they hide together in the bushes, afraid of the echoing gunshots.
When I called my mother to ask, not how she ended in America, but why PG, she said she ended here through her cousin Florence, who America recognizes as her sister. It was the only place she had relatives as a refugee. Florence, according to my mother, was in the area because her husband worked a job in D.C. After a bit, they moved to PG, like most people looking for a house in the suburbs. Florence, like my mother, is from Sierra Leone. Ending in America because they married her young and she was sent here to live with her husband, who, from what I can gather, also migrated from Sierra Leone. I don’t know why or what decisions led him to end up where we ended. I didn’t implicitly find where the lines connect, but I can infer.
Most of these conversations happened over the phone, me asking questions that I couldn’t know for sure how they affected my parents. I can’t see the ways my mother recounts her memories and the shifts that exist in her eyes when she recalls them. I can’t see my father’s face change as he chooses to tell me things he wouldn’t normally tell, or the face he makes thinking to keep some facts to himself and himself alone. Most of all, I wonder what I lose over the phone, I wonder if I could have these conversations face to face, without space to dampen the tangible feelings between us. I wonder what I’ve lost to memory and to time. Stories I am not a part of existing apart from me, but in some sense still belong to me as inheritance. I cannot know it all, even if I want to; I cannot probe and pick apart the brains of those around me. For memory to be fact, we would have to be able to remember every bit of experience, but that is not human.
One of the oldest narratives in Western culture is the story of Eve and Adam’s banishment from Eden. It stands as a testament to the enduring human experience of losing one’s place in the world. Coming to America, my mother found herself a different God. Sierra Leoneans are mostly Muslims, and my father still is, and my mother once was. Her Allah became the Christian God, the man, I believe, gave her the strength to continue on in America and build her life.
Unlike the majority of the Black people in PG, my family isn’t built here in generations, not migrated from slavery and then stationed here. And still they found their way here among the others with people who don’t share the same history as us, but still look the same.
Despite the disparities that I later learned come from the composition of what it means to be African American and to be an African whose nationality is American, I was always American first. My parents, my siblings, and my whole family are everything else. African first, Sierra Leone and Gambia are their homes. Even my niece, 15 years younger than me, has experienced her homecoming onto the beaches of Salone.
For a while, my parents and I could only be that one thing, American first. They were exiles from their land, forced to move to have a better life, conceiving me into that life. But they aren’t exiles anymore. And America is no longer their “true and only” home. When retirement comes for them, my parents will go back home to their houses in Freetown, where they will live in serenity, old with the white sand of the beaches mimicking their hair and the beautiful images of the hills. The smell of a country changed from their childhood, but still ultimately home.
Inevitably, when I go to Salone, its past, to me, is nothing more than a constructed memory. My life has been shaped by stories, language, and experiences of my family’s past. Will I feel my history in its soil?
A homecoming is not a return to the past, but a confrontation with what time has quietly rewritten. I imagine that when my mom went back home for the first time in years to retrieve my siblings that it didn’t feel like home at all. Friends and family dead, buildings different and not what they used to look like. I imagine her walking around and saddened by the connections she can never reclaim, by the sights that only now exist in her memories, and her choosing to accept it as her home all the same. To my mother, some things are set in stone—home is always home, even if it is different. There is nothing as important to them as where your family is and God.
I hope to reconcile with this displacement. To experience Freetown and feel free. To feel its history and know that I have a place where my history lies and is actively being created for the future. I will leave PG, maybe for D.C., New York, London, or maybe I’ll just go to Salone.
Sophie clowned me for saying columbus is a big city, but my aunt kept stressing ohio, and who am i to say she’s wrong.
missed yaaa. beautiful piece i'm glad you shared ⭐️
I’d love a dramatic reading in person