Harare Review of Books

178 pages.

First published in 2019.

Finished reading on Apr 30, 2021.

Genre: Fiction

A homecoming tale of a family brought together by migration and torn apart by tragedy and secrets. In a search for identity, love and acceptance two ordinary girls travel from London to Lusaka to Lagos in order to save their family and discover their destiny.

Meet the Ayomides and the Kombes, Zambian-Nigerian-Jamaican powerhouse families brought together during the post-colonial migration of the 1960’s to the UK – and later separated by death, divorce and betrayal. Scattered between London, Lusaka, and Lagos, only the new generation can save this family.

Maggie Ayomide and Bupe Kombe are cousins on either side of the world who couldn’t be more different. Zambian-Nigerian and Zambian-Jamaican, both yearn for their disbanded family to reunite. When Bupe leaves Brixton to go to secondary school in Zambia, she brings light and disorder to Maggie’s world. However, the girls are hindered by dark family secrets such as the mysterious death of their late grandmother, and Maggie’s missing Nigerian father.

From the blazing streets of Brixton riots to multi-party elections in Zambia, glitzy Independence Day celebrations, and adventurous nightclubs in Lagos, this heartwarming story breathes life into the modern-day result of postcolonial Africa and 20th Century migration as it follows two ordinary girls trying to find their identity and reunite their family.

Full disclosure: I “met” Natasha at AfroLit Sans Frontiere, and she was wonderful, and personable, and I immediately wanted to be her friend 😂 Fuller disclosure: I have Zambian ancestry, and I love everything about that place (apart from it being exciting and exotic to me). So, here’s a book set in Chinsala, in London, and in Lagos, which is such a treat.

No Be From Hia is available on Amazon (I got the Kindle version), and has been on my TBR for ages. Finally sat down to it this week, and I’m glad I did! What a delightful read! I enjoyed the character arcs, especially, although I kept getting the two girls mixed up (there was so much overlap between them!).

The book is also pretty epic, spanning three generations (nearly four), so there’s lots to enjoy (a bit like watching Dallas, I suppose — the old one, of course). There is some really beautiful prose in there, too, and there are evocative descriptions of place. There was also that incident with the polar bear 🤭👀

Come for: African literature that’s about a family that feels real, and a really empathetic treatment of (us) Africans, by a fellow African (no white saviours or kids with flies on their faces).

Stay for: Natasha is a really good writer! This is a good story.

Rated: 8/10. You won’t be disappointed.