202018 - London Estate was that Village that raised us
Cousins on the estate. Aunties in the Church. Neighbours who became family
Letter ID: LON-202018
Dear London,
I was born here in the early nineties. My parents came from Nigeria before I was born. I grew up on an estate in South London. It was not fancy. It was concrete, loud, and always busy. But it was home.
On that estate, I had cousins everywhere. Not real cousins, but the way Nigerian families do things here. Your mum’s friend’s son becomes your cousin. Your dad’s church friend’s daughter becomes your cousin. You grow up together. You play outside together. You get told off by each other’s parents. You even eat at each other’s houses sometimes, but only if your mum has given serious permission, because every Nigerian child knows you do not just accept food anywhere. That was part of it too.
The church added even more. Sundays were long. Too long when you were a kid. But that was where the aunties lived. That was where the uncles asked about school. That was where people who came from the same place, but ended up here, built a new kind of family. London made that possible. Not on purpose. Just by being the place where we all landed.
But it was never only Nigerians. That is what I remember most.
Aunty Sue lived in the flat above us. She was fully white. Always in her dressing gown. Always walking her dog Shiloh. She would shout down the balcony to tell my mum if a parcel came. She would slip me biscuits when my mum was not looking.
Aunty Barbara lived on the other side of the estate. Also fully white. She used to babysit me when I was small. I remember being walked across the courtyard to her flat. I remember falling asleep on her sofa while the TV played in the background. I remember the smell of her house. Different from ours, but still familiar.
None of this was organised. No diversity programme. No community initiative. Just people living close enough to become part of each other’s lives.
When I think about London now, I hold onto that. The way the city quietly stitched people together. Diaspora families. Estate neighbours. Church aunties. White aunties. All of us raising each other’s kids without realising that’s what we were doing.
People say it takes a village to raise a child. Looking back, London was that village for us. A big city that somehow still raised us like a neighbourhood.
That was the beauty of London for me. Not the skyline. Not the buses. Just the way it made strangers into family.
I am grateful I got to grow up inside that.
From Ade
Occasionally we shape real stories into letters, so every voice is heard.”
Source: Letter sent by writer
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