Living abroad is a slow, strange unstitching. You don’t notice it at first—the way your tongue softens around certain consonants, how you start nodding along to songs you don’t understand, the moment you realize you’ve gone a full week without speaking your mother’s language. Staying connected to your culture isn’t about preserving a museum version of home. It’s about building a living bridge between where you come from and where you are now. For those of us in the diaspora, that bridge is made of food, language, ritual, memory, and the quiet grief of distance. It’s also made of deliberate, sometimes awkward, choices. This is how I make mine, and why they matter.
Language as a Living Room
My mother tongue is Yoruba, a language full of proverbs, tonal precision, and the kind of indirectness that can drive a diaspora child mad. When I first moved, I spoke it less and less. My thoughts began to form in English, and my dreams followed. I felt a quiet panic, as if a room in my mind was being locked up.
So I started small. I’d call my grandmother not just to check in, but to listen. I’d ask her to tell me stories I’d heard a hundred times, just to hear the cadence. I found a WhatsApp group of Yoruba speakers in my new city—some students, some elders—and we meet monthly to talk, argue, and laugh in a language that feels like home. The linguist Aneta Pavlenko writes about “language attrition” in migrants, but also about “language reclamation” as an act of identity. For me, it’s not about fluency. It’s about keeping the door open.
Sometimes I mix languages deliberately, a habit that feels like a betrayal until I remember that code-switching is its own kind of fluency. My journal is a mess of English and Yoruba, a private hybrid that reflects my actual life, not a sanitized version of it.
The Kitchen as a Cultural Anchor
I learned to cook properly only after I left. Before, I was a lazy observer, leaning against the kitchen doorway while my aunties pounded yam or stirred egusi, asking questions but never touching the fire. Abroad, the kitchen became my embassy. I started with jollof rice—not because it’s iconic, but because the smell of frying tomato paste and onions is the smell of Sunday afternoons. I’d call my mother, phone propped against the salt jar, and she’d guide me through the “until it looks right” measurements that no cookbook ever captures.
Food is a sensory shortcut to belonging. Researchers at the University of Surrey found that food memories are often the most vivid and emotionally charged for migrants, acting as a “portable homeland” when physical return is impossible. For me, it’s not just about eating. It’s about the process: the pounding, the waiting, the scent that fills a foreign apartment and temporarily overwrites its geography. I’ve learned to source smoked fish from a tiny African grocer two towns over, and I now grow scent leaves in a pot on my windowsill. These small acts are a quiet refusal to let my palate assimilate.
But it’s not always romantic. Sometimes I’m too tired to cook, and the pull of convenience wins. I’ve eaten terrible, overpriced “ethnic” takeout that left me feeling more alienated than a plain bowl of pasta. The guilt is real, but I’ve learned that connection isn’t a daily scorecard. It’s a practice, and practices have fallow seasons.
Rituals That Travel
Culture isn’t just the big holidays. It’s the small, stubborn rituals that survive because they’re portable. For me, it’s the way I greet elders—a slight bow, a specific phrase—even when the elder is just a friend’s parent on a video call. It’s the way I name my children, even the ones I haven’t had yet, in my head, rolling the Yoruba syllables around to see if they’ll fit into a Western schoolyard.
One of my most grounding rituals is the Sunday phone call. Not a text, not a voice note—a real, rambling call to my parents. We talk about nothing and everything: the price of tomatoes back home, the latest family drama, the way my mother still prays for me every morning. These calls are a thread that keeps me tethered. They remind me that my culture isn’t a static thing I left behind; it’s a living, breathing network of people who still see me as theirs.
I’ve also learned to adapt rituals. I can’t always attend naming ceremonies or funerals, but I can send money, record a message, or light a candle at the same hour. The anthropologist Victor Turner wrote about “liminality”—the in-between state of being neither here nor there. For diaspora folks, that liminality is permanent. Our rituals have to be flexible enough to cross oceans.
The Weight of Representation
There’s a particular exhaustion that comes with being the only one. The only Black person in the office, the only Nigerian at the dinner party, the only one who can explain why the news from home is so complicated. You become an unofficial ambassador, expected to translate not just words but entire worldviews. It’s a role I didn’t choose, and one I sometimes resent.
But I’ve learned to set boundaries. I answer questions when I have the energy, and I redirect when I don’t. I’ve also found that sharing my culture on my own terms—through writing, through cooking for friends, through the stories I choose to tell—is more sustaining than being a reluctant spokesperson. This blog is part of that. It’s a space where I don’t have to explain myself to anyone, but where anyone who’s curious can listen.
Grief and Gratitude
Staying connected to your culture means staying connected to loss. Every time I miss a wedding, a funeral, a birth, I feel the distance like a physical ache. I’ve learned that grief and gratitude can coexist. I grieve the moments I miss, and I’m grateful for the technology that lets me witness them from afar. I grieve the version of myself that might have stayed, and I’m grateful for the person I’ve become by leaving.
This isn’t a tidy resolution. It’s a daily negotiation. Some days, I feel deeply rooted in my culture. Other days, I feel like a fraud, too Westernized to claim it. But I’ve come to see that the questioning itself is a form of connection. It means I still care. It means the bridge is still there, even when it’s shrouded in fog.
Practical Ways to Stay Rooted
Over the years, I’ve collected a set of practices that help me feel connected. They’re not prescriptive, but they’re real. Here are a few:
Create a Cultural Playlist
Music is a time machine. I have a playlist of songs from my childhood—highlife, juju, Afrobeat, the gospel my mother played on Sunday mornings. When I’m homesick, I put it on and let the rhythms pull me back. I also add new music from artists back home, so the playlist evolves with the culture.
Build a Diaspora Community
Find your people, even if they’re not your exact people. I’ve joined a West African women’s group that meets monthly. We’re from different countries, but the shared experience of being African women abroad creates a powerful sense of home. We trade recipes, gossip, and survival tips. It’s a chosen family.
Document Your Story
Write it down, record it, draw it. The act of documenting your experience is an act of preservation. I keep a journal, but I also record voice notes for myself—little snippets of memory, phrases in Yoruba I don’t want to forget, the sound of my own voice speaking my mother’s tongue.
Engage with Home Politics and News
It’s easy to disconnect from the daily realities of your home country when you’re thousands of miles away. But staying informed—reading local newspapers, following activists on social media, participating in diaspora voting where possible—keeps you tethered to the present, not just the past. It also reminds you that culture is dynamic, not a frozen snapshot.
FAQ: Staying Connected to Your Culture Abroad
How do I maintain my native language when I’m the only speaker in my household?
Consistency is more important than perfection. Even 15 minutes a day of listening to music, podcasts, or radio in your language can help. If you have children, speak to them in your language, even if they reply in the dominant language. Look for online language exchange partners or local cultural groups. The goal is to keep the language alive in your mind, not to achieve textbook fluency.
What if I feel disconnected from my culture and don’t know where to start?
Start with food. It’s the most accessible entry point. Cook a dish you remember from childhood, even if you have to call a relative for the recipe. The act of cooking engages all your senses and can unlock memories. From there, explore music, films, or books from your culture. Connection is built through small, repeated acts, not grand gestures.
How do I deal with the guilt of not being “cultural enough”?
Guilt is a common companion for diaspora folks, but it’s rarely productive. Remind yourself that culture is not a test you pass or fail. It’s a relationship you nurture. Some seasons you’ll be more engaged than others, and that’s okay. What matters is the intention to stay connected, not a perfect scorecard. Consider talking to others in your community—you’ll likely find they share the same feelings.
Can I blend my culture with the culture of my new home without losing my identity?
Absolutely. Cultural identity isn’t a zero-sum game. Blending traditions—celebrating both sets of holidays, creating fusion foods, raising bilingual children—can enrich your experience and create something new. The key is to do it consciously, so you’re making choices rather than simply drifting toward assimilation. Your hybrid identity is valid and valuable.
What Comes Next
This article is part of an ongoing exploration of diaspora life—the joys, the grief, the everyday negotiations. In future pieces, I’ll dive deeper into specific aspects: the challenge of raising children with a cultural identity you’re still defining yourself, the role of food in preserving memory, and the complicated relationship between diaspora communities and their home countries’ politics. If this resonates, I hope you’ll return. And if you have your own story of connection—or disconnection—I’d love to hear it. The comment section is open, and so is my inbox.
