Identity runs deep - this is an amazing story - and shows how much we still need to discover about identity. As a white person, born in Africa, issues of identity loom large, and (in a way) it is a privilege to be exposed to many identity struggles play out day-to-day. An example that I have experienced is how strongly people retain certain African cultural characteristics in other lands (America, Europe, Asia), even when they are from families that have been in those countries for hundreds of years, and even when they probably feel fully assimilated. I don't think we really fully understand how culture passes down through generations, whether this is through stories, language, biology. Whatever drives it, it is a beautiful feature of being human.
As another white African, I feel similarly. I feel very African, and it is part of who I am. My family has been here for about 400 years, but I still also feel I have an additional "inherited" European culture. And this mixed culture is confusing but interesting at the same time.
I lived in the UK for 18 months, and I adapted well there, but I still felt like an outsider. I'm thinking of moving to Germany for a while to see what that's like. I'll probably come back though. Home is home.
I'm not looking for a place to feel at home. I'm looking for a place that's different, but not incompatible. And I like learning about the small differences in culture. And my family is originally from Germany, so it might not be more different.
I think you bring up a good point about how people carry their culture forwards without knowing it. There are some interesting statistics that show that wherever a white American's family members came from in Europe has an impact on them even now
Odd. His wikipedia page [0] offers a very different ending. Rather than "went to live in Fort St. Sebastian," it offers:
> According to at least one report, he was taken to a Dutch fortress, Fort San Sebastian in Shama, in the 1750s, possibly to prevent him sowing dissent among his people. The exact date, place, and manner of his death are unknown, though he probably died in about 1759 at the fort in Chama in Ghana.
The German and French wiki articles have yet other variations of his life's end and year of death, as do a few other articles on Google's first page result. Just spitballing here, but digging into the details looks like a low hanging fruit for someone in need of a thesis topic for a degree in History.
If anyone is wondering why he returned to where he was from I suggest to read the novel «Americanah» by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which tells a story sharing at least one motif, perhaps. I suppose he felt alienated and was homesick even after decades of living in Europe.
The German wiki notes that as his mentors and friends died, live got more and more difficult on a personal and professional level. A marriage proposal ended in a lot of public racism against him, a campaign that culminated in the publishing of a series of a mocking poems against him (by another professor).
