"Nakozonga" - Lingala for "I Will Come Back"

Tale of the African seeking a better life abroad and nursing sweet dreams of home

The first time I heard  Congolese (DRC) singer-songwriter Lokua Kanza's beautiful song 'Nakozonga', I almost wept. I didn't know the meaning of the words, but there was something about the beautiful, compelling and simple melody that reached deep into my soul. I'm a lover of African music anyway, but at the time I first listened to the song, I was really missing home (Nigeria), and family and everything that was familiar.  It’s amazing how music can evoke all kinds of feelings and catch us off our emotional-guard.  Which is why they often say be careful what you listen to,  since the messaging in music can etch so deeply into one’s mind. Anyway, the song was just the light trigger I needed to wallow in nostalgia about my African home. In Kanza’s language, Lingala (a Bantu language with more than 10 million speakers, and spoken throughout north-western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), large parts of the Republic of the Congo, as well  some parts of Angola and the Central African Republic (CAR) ), ‘Nakozonga’ means ‘I will come back’. The refrain of the song basically says:

 “I'm leaving today to go find a better living, but I 'll be back. I'm just travelling, I'm not dead. In the future, I will go back to my country, the country where I was born, because there is too much suffering in this foreign country”.

Home can mean many things. Home is where you long to go back to, the place that provides that giddy feeling of familiarity, a sense of security and comfort.  In the worst times, it’s where you shouldn’t be afraid to cry or laugh or just be yourself. Far from a physical location, home is really where the heart is. But it’s possible for your heart to be in two place at once, isn’t it? And home sometimes can be so familiar that is provides the largest source of criticism and expectation any human being could ever be exposed to. Every year, thousands of Africans still (yes even in 2012 and 2013) try to make the journey to Europe as illegal migrants  risking life and limb through smugglers, deserts, oceans and sea, and worse – in the under-carriage of aircraft - and the humiliating possibility of being sent back home, handcuffed or in the company of security services, on a plane with others who have voluntarily and freely preferred short-term visits as tourists, business travelers or students. Young Africans who have no means of seeking life overseas legally, risk that journey for one thing. The dream of a better life and future. The Sahara desert crossings, which many young, daring mostly West African men have dared to make, are among the most notorious of such transits – far from the rather comfortable, though not luxurious boat scene shown in Kanza’s music video.

I should  pause momentarily by saying there are now almost as many young Africans moving in the opposite direction – from the West back to Africa - searching for new opportunities to build a life and dream big in the new ‘rising’ Africa. But I’ll focus on those who are the subjects in ‘Nakozonga’ ; the poor-hungry-for-life Africans -who have left Africa in search of a better life. People leave for all sorts of reasons – to flee persecution, war, conflict,  to seek asylum, as students (About 50% of whom then up as economic migrants), or some who’ve genuinely fallen in love and built new lives in the West.

Whatever the reason, within them is a sense that they leave home and when/if they return, they should be better - financially and economically - than when they left. Till that glorious return dawns however, the expectation may be that they also contribute to the family pot – for education, small business, healthcare etc. – for their relatives.  In 2012, the World Bank estimated that the flow of remittances to the developing world exceeded $406bn. Of that estimated, one African country – Nigeria - accounted for $21bn, putting it amongst the top developing world recipients of remittances. But beyond the mega-stats on remittances, what most young Africans  want to return home with is the dignity of having travelled against all odds, overcome life and death situations, conquered and returned in a much better position that they left. Kanza’s song makes a reference to ‘suffering’.  While this this may to be too extreme to describe life for the ‘average’ African  (legal) migrant in London, it represents the daily struggles they still have to go through in ‘foreign lands’.

Earlier I alluded to the story of Jose Matada, the 26 Mozambican man who  was found dead in west London after falling from the undercarriage of an aeroplane on its way to land at Heathrow from Angola. Matada had wanted to come to Europe for a better life. But his aspiration was cut short, and he fell to his death  - he likely probably froze to death or near-death before he fell, since the plane would have flown at altitudes impossible for the human body to sbear. In his actions I sense the desperation that would have motivated him, and so many others, to go to such lengths to escape their sun-scorched lives, and I’m left in no doubt that our home – Africa – still needs a lot of fixing. In Matada’s case, he never came back. He never had the chance to build a life that would give him the chance to come back, perhaps better than he left. If there was an extra verse in Kanza’s song, I would add lines to this effect: “What suffering would you rather bear? The one in a foreign land, or the one in your own home?”