Rene Carayol MBE

I can still remember the day when Mum and Dad said, "Right, we're going back now". And it was just as I had been accepted into university. They said, "He'll come in three years, the rest of us are going back now". Going back where? Home? We had never been back from when they had left. And even though my parents only spoke Wolof at home, to us, and we would reply in English, they kept the culture up. Mum cooked, Mum and Dad wore African clothes at home.

Our relatives would come and speak to us, and I can still understand it clearly and speak with an English accent. But going back 'home' was not an option. This was home.

So, by the time my parents decided to go back, when I was nineteen, we were British, my parents were Gambian. It took me years to understand, to get beyond the feelings of abandonment. Now I see it as the complete opposite. They had given up eighteen years of their lives to give us a chance. Whereas, at the time, it felt like, 'What chance are you giving me?'.

My sisters were married, and I had to live with my two brothers who were still at school. In many respects, from my Mum's point of view - my mother was an African's African, with a genuine dislike for the West. Mainly because it was cold - it was freezing compared to where she came from. And on top of that, her culture, her morals, her values, her understanding, and she was someone in Gambia, she was no one over here.