My first trip to Africa was to a UN women’s conference in 1985 and I remember standing in the middle of Nairobi and realising that everyone in sight was black. It was my first time in a black- majority country and I loved it; shortly afterwards trips to Egypt and Madagascar blew my mind. When I finally made it to Nigeria in 1991 – the country my father had left 40 years earlier – it felt like a kind of homecoming, even though it made me feel incredibly British. It had long existed in my imagination, but my hope of belonging was a romanticised ideal.
For over 20 years now, most of my travelling has been as a writer, on tour to festivals, conferences, writer’s residencies and international university fellowships. I still feel excited when invitations pop into my inbox to appear at events in, say, Brazil, Jamaica, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, New Zealand, Libya, Iceland, the USA and Bali. I am not the kind of writer who can squirrel myself away for years without travelling abroad and I feel invigorated by these trips where I present my literature and deliver talks, even if it’s only an overnighter to a festival in Italy where a few hours after arriving I might find myself in a restaurant in an ancient square, feeling a million light years away from London. I love engaging directly with international audiences and experiencing first-hand how my writing travels and impacts on them. When I return home, I am better able to focus on my work in progress.
Travel for me is a dream fulfilled. I’ve lost count of the number of countries I’ve visited for work and for pleasure. Each trip broadens my perspective on our planet and deepens my understanding of the many different ways in which we inhabit it.
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