ABIGAIL KABANDULA
IN EDINBURGH, I’ve come to accept a simple truth: every day is a bad hair day.
The weather refuses consistency. Sunshine can dissolve into wind, rain, or even snow in a span of an hour. You learn quickly to leave the house prepared – hat, scarf, jacket -not out of caution, but out of experience. And still, you are often undone.
For many women, African women in particular, though certainly not exclusively, hair is not incidental. It reflects time, care, and no small financial investment. A visit to the salon can take hours, and the result is meant to be seen. There is an unspoken understanding here: effort invites acknowledgment.
A compliment, however brief, affirms that the work has been noticed.
And yet, in a place like Scotland, the elements are largelyindifferent to such effort. I have tried, with determination and optimism, to preserve a carefully styled look, only to watch it unravel under wind or the practical necessity of a hat. This is not a private struggle.
On buses and in offices, you begin to notice the same quiet compromise—hair shaped less by intention than by weather and routine. Eventually, I accepted what the city seems to insist upon: every day is a bad hair day.
What begins as a small frustration gradually opens into a larger realisation. Living abroad, particularly in colder climates, requires a series of adjustments that are easy to overlook but deeply felt. There are forms of ease in many African contexts that rarely announce themselves until they are gone.
The climate, for instance, is often steady enough to simplify daily life. In some places, you can rely on a consistent wardrobe for most of the year. Cape Town, with its more unpredictable winters, is a notable exception. These are small conveniences, but their absence reshapes your routines in unexpected ways.
Mobility is another quiet shift. In much of Europe, and in cities along the northeastern United States, public transport is not optional; it is central. Cities like Geneva and Tokyo have programmed public transportation schedules to the second.
Buses and trains replace a level of convenience that many middle-class Africans grow up with: drivers, domestic staff, and the broader systems of support that structure everyday life. These are often dismissed as luxuries, but their absence reveals how much they shape one’s sense of time, effort, and independence. It is perhaps in this context that moments of display, when members of the diaspora return home during Christmas or Easter, can be better understood.
What may appear excessive or performative can also reflect an attempt to reclaim, even briefly, a sense of ease and abundance that is no longer part of daily life abroad.
And yet, public transport offers something unexpected in return.
In cities where Africans are few, Oslo, for instance, the presence of another Black person rarely goes unnoticed. There is a quiet recognition, an awareness that passes between you across a bus aisle or a meeting room.
What follows is often a brief hesitation: do you speak, or let the moment pass?
More often than not, someone speaks. The question is familiar: Where are you from? It is a simple question, but rarely a simple answer. A response like “Denver” may be accurate, but it does not quite satisfy the intent. What is being asked reaches further back, toward origin, toward history.
The answer matters. To say “Zambia,” “Kenya,” or “Ghana” is to open a different kind of exchange. The tone shifts. There is recognition, sometimes even warmth, as though a shared reference point has been quietly established. In that moment, distance narrows.
I have often noticed that West Africans, in particular, approach these encounters with a certain ease. They are quick to initiate conversation and comfortable turning a passing moment into a connection. It is a small but striking reminder that even in unfamiliar spaces, familiarity can be created.
Perhaps this is what it means to live in the diaspora, not simply to move across countries, but to adjust, often quietly, to new ways of being. Over time, these adjustments accumulate. They reshape how you move through the world, how you relate to others, and how you understand yourself.
These reflections are drawn from years of living across continents—studying, working, and building a life far from home. They are not instructions, but observations. And if they offer anything at all, it is the recognition that even the smallest details of daily life—something as ordinary as a bad hair day—can reveal something deeper about adaptation, identity, and belonging.
The author holds joint fellowship appointments at Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver and University of Edinburgh Law School.
