When I was a young boy growing up, I had the pleasure and thankfully the opportunity to travel to many countries around the world. Visiting so many of these places fascinated me and opened my eyes to the beautiful cultures and people but most importantly, the freedom the people in these countries had were important for a young Nigerian boy to see...
Nowhere excited and enthralled me more than the UK. The people had funny and muddled accents and the television was amazing; Sylvanian Families, Rosie and Jim and so many more. At the time I only had four stations to watch and my heroes were people like Lennox Lewis and Nasser Hussain. I didn't recognize it at the time but it was the multicultural environment that I loved about the country and it shaped my thinking in a large way.
As I've gotten older, I've seen a different side to not just the UK, but much of Europe and the Americas and while I was worried before, I am sat here on the edge of my bed absolutely petrified by what our world is coming to. It is becoming a place ruled by fear and panic. It is becoming a place for the cynics to thrive and the meek to cower. It is becoming a place where public opinion is shaped by hatred and inclusion and integrations are looked at as a dream that only the naive still cling on to.
This is not a world I want to live in; indeed it is not a world that my Nigerian, Irish, Trinidadian son, a true child of the world would want to live in. But here we are, staring hatred in the eyes and somehow, our focus is wavering.
When I was a young boy, I knew there was hate, but I didn't believe in it. I am still young but I am no longer a boy and while I definitely know there is hate, I unfortunately now believe in it's power to divide us where love once brought us together and that hate is being propagated around the world.
Whisper it quietly, but Boris Johnson as PM, Katie Hopkins as Justice Secretary, Donald Trump as President of the World and a new Ice Age in the next decade are all distinct possibilities and we never saw this coming.
I am Timi