Who is Farhan Lalji?

Imperialism, migration, travelling and life have been on my mind a fair bit this past week.

Having watched The Last King of Scotland over the weekend, I revisited the plight of Asians (and Africans) in East Africa during the rule of Idi Amin.  I’ve been fascinated with this period of history for some time now.  As my parents moved from East Africa – Tanzania – to England (my dad) and Canada (my mom), I’ve always felt a connection to East Africa.  In fact as part of my MBA entrance exam I said the three people I would like to invite to my fantasy dinner would be Idi Amin, Pierre Trudeau and my dad.

We also watched Empire’s Children on 4OD this evening, covering the story of Adrian Lester’s travels to Jamaica to trace the steps of his grandfather from St Mary’s to Birmingham.

If that wasn’t enough, the wife is doing an essay for her masters on post colonialism and science fiction.

All of these things make me wonder about our own future travels.  Moving from Canada to England was a bit fluky.  But the future is in our hands now, where do we go from here?  Where is our future?  Is it in England, Canada, the US wherever, or try and make our future by stepping into our past.  Taking a risk and moving to East Africa or even India at some point.  It would be cool to be able to take my family history full circle, from my great grand parents, to my grand parents, to my parents to me, from India to East Africa to England to Canada, and then from Canada to England to Africa and back to India.

In addition, as the wife pointed out, our parents benefited greatly from life in East Africa.  From access to education and the ability to build businesses, our situation would be much different had our ancestors chosen to stay in India.  So it would be pretty cool to go back to Africa and give a little back to the continent.

But then so too would staying in London, enjoying four seasons in one day and British TV be cool.  It’s just a different type of cool.