Shad – My African Story

My African story stretches across generations and is centuries long. My story is also deeply indebted to many countries and many people. However, it is impossible for you to understand my story without first understanding the complex lives my parents have lived. My African story is, of course, bound up in theirs. Each of my parents was born in Rwanda, and they each share the story of being displaced from the land of their birth. By 1959, at a time when my parents were still children, each of them was a refugee. In the years before my parents met, they each lived in various countries throughout east and central Africa, sometimes in close proximities but never meeting. Eventually, they met in Uganda. This is where my (family) own African story begins, as that is where my parents were married and where my older sister was born. Due to insecurity there, my parents had to move yet again shortly thereafter, and I was born in Kenya in the summer of 1982.

My mother continuously instilled in me a sense that my life, my presence, and my personal integrity were all rooted in a history—a history of Rwandan people who were (and are) full of goodness, complexity, dignity and fortitude.

By the time I turned one year old, my parents were set on creating a new life for themselves, my older sister and me. They wanted to find a place where, finally, they could stay. A place where my sister and I could grow up with stability and opportunities that they never knew. They applied for residence in several countries, and Canada was one of the first to accept them. We settled in the small city of London, Ontario, Canada.

In the early 1980’s, London was a place not unlike most Canadian cities of that era: dominated by white bodies, white cultures and white ways of understanding the world. Growing up in such an environment meant that from a very young age, I was aware of being different from my peers, I was aware of the different set of expectations that regulated my life, and I was aware of being one of the very few Black faces in my city, my school, my group of friends. As I came of age in this environment and grew to understand London as a sort of home for myself, my parents helped me understand that while in Canada, my Blackness, Africanness, and Rwandan blood were all markers of difference, they were also sources of dignity, strength and goodness.

My mother continuously instilled in me a sense that my life, my presence, and my personal integrity were all rooted in a history—a history of Rwandan people who were (and are) full of goodness, complexity, dignity and fortitude.

So much hinges upon the word ‘home’. This word can mean so many different things. I suppose it is the complexity and importance of ‘home’ that makes it necessary for me to share my story as an African. I belong, rather undeniably, to a hyphenated identity. I am an African-Canadian.

She understood the myriad of messages and expectations young black boys are asked to wrestle with. That often, the lives of black boys are judged against the numerous stereotypes and perceptions that exist about what the embodiment of blackness should look like. Thankfully, my mother made me understand that it was not my job to live up to anyone’s stereotype or expectation–whether those expectations were positive or negative.

It was my mother who told me that I had every right and the ability to achieve great things, but likewise, I had every right to be average too. No matter what standard the world held me to, my only responsibility was to be my truest, most authentic self, and to be the sort of person who knew how to embody love, care and goodness.

In his own way, my father was and is a living testament to the humility, generosity of spirit, and social consciousness of which my mother spoke. My father founded the first African Association in the city of London, and later, the first Rwandan Associations in all of Canada.