I am Britico, mistakenly born in Nigeria

I'm in love...... again......John Legend's Evolver album has some songs that have my head spinning in a fantasy, lyrics such as 'I know that we just met but could you love me quickly...'throw me into a realm of lust, I lust after love.

I bought the CD after perusing the shelves of HMV at Heathrow terminal 4, it was the second time within the last 24 hours that I was at Heathrow. The night before, the majority of my family (meaning without the boss lady-mum as I now call her after this trip) returned from Nigeria on a relatively pleasant flight with Arik Air.

The visit to Nigeria was a farewell to my grandmother who passed away on the 17th September, I was on holiday at the time celebrating a friends 25th when I received a 2-day old text from my sister announcing the news. I was shocked to say the least and although I knew she was old and had been threatening to leave us for a while, she was 'Big Mummy'who was always at the house in Mokola, who could still put me on her lap at the age of 90, who had come to London to look after us in the early 90s.

I vividly remember turning on my phone, I think it was the 19th (I always leave it off whilst on holiday but check for messages at times) and seeing the words, they seemed to dance across the screen of my Blackberry 8210. 'Big Mummy is dead'were the words my sister had sent, or all I could make out. The silence that ensued probably only lasted two seconds, but it was a sharp contrast to the laughter that had filled the room only seconds before. I screamed 'no' several times, threw my phone, ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. In fits of tears I started to slide down the wall as I loss all sense of how dirty that place actually was. Why did she have to go I thought selfishly.

Tears fill my eyes now as I think of Big mummy. I am one of 34 grandchildren, the middle child of her eight and last child. She lost two of them in her lifetime, so four of my cousins are orphans. My closest cousins have adopted my own parents as their own and I don't mind sharing because that's what family do. The funeral was like a reunion as we all met to celebrate the life of this brilliant woman who was still making money and providing an income at the age of 92.

The trip was short but invigorating in the sense that I had a renewed enthusiasm for life and what I could do with my own talents. I saw the opportunities that my parents had given me by leaving Nigeria in may 1991 for London. I also wondered what I would have been, would I be this same person, outspoken, bubbly and slightly crazy, would I be downtrodden by the challenges of life in Nigeria, or would I be the spoilt rich brat that I felt my cousins thought me to be?

Being one of the youngest out of the cousins meant that most of the others are married with children or engaged. I marvelled at the different relationships that I saw around me and was encouraged by the blatant show of love between these couples. I remember sitting outside, with my cousin who now lives in America with his wife and beautiful daughter. He told his memories of my parent's wedding day, of how instead for waiting for my pregnant mother who had just lost her father a few days earlier to walk down the aisle, my father went to meet her halfway. He joked that he had chosen his own bride because she was petite and he wanted to do the same and carry her up the aisle

As he continued to talk with his brother's baby sleeping in his arms I learned many other things that I had not known about my family, good and bad. There and then I made a promise to choose carefully who I love and to fiercely protect my children (not in the crazy mum way), I grew excited about the future and a little sad about the past, his and his brother's past. Knowing that you can't trust everybody even family to look after your children is a shame, but that doesn't mean all is lost.

Like Pandora's box, what's left is hope, hope in the good people of the world.

TBC