Illustration
Eugenia Loli
same same, but different
Awkward and African.
Fresh off the plane,
but they hear boat.
They mock her accent,
but never her right hook.
She learnt that from Claudette.
Proud and Jamaican,
mouth that ran like rivers,
rapid tongue,
cuss down anyone,
feared by everyone
but took her in.
Hair threaded in to branches
that pointed towards home,
she had no language of her own.
Collected reggae tapes
and went to bashments.
It wasn’t hiplife or highlife
but bodies moved
in ways she recognised.
Blending in to the darkness,
West indians and West Africans
finding communion in community.
Her thick accent lost
under the sounds of Gregory Isaacs.
And when the lights went out,
everyone was black.
Tania Nwachukwu is a Nigerian writer and
actress born and raised in London. She is a
member of the Barbican Young Poets collective,
and one of the creative directors for ADANTA.
Her work has been published in various
magazines, and performed to audiences across
the UK and Nigeria. When she’s not writing,
she’s on Skyscanner plotting her next escape.