Lagos is a city where traffic rules all. When you spend hours a day in congestion you’d think you’d become used to the mundanity, but I still struggled to occupy my mind whilst sweating in the back of a local uber. But I’d find that they provide the perfect place for musings on local life. “There’s just something so different about us and the locals.” I sat listening to my two fellow passengers, Lagos-born professionals now living in the UK as they commented on differences between the city’s residents and those visiting from abroad. Like them, I didn’t live in Africa but saw it as a kind of home away from home; it was the place that had raised our parents, and their parents, and their parents before emigration broke the link in the cycle. This was the first time I’d visited Nigeria’s party capital in over a decade, but I didn’t look or feel like a tourist. My swiftly darkening skin tone, facial features and bold surname were enough to tell those I met of my connection to the region. But foreignness makes its appearance in more subtle ways. “It’s even down to the way they walk,” one continued. “Here, they walk like they haven’t eaten for four days.” I privately found the comment crude, but both continued in laughter whilst the other passenger responded. “Well, some of them haven’t!” he quipped back. I’m sure I was supposed to have laughed, but a bout of both self-awareness and discomfort stopped chuckles in their tracks. Crude delivery does not make a truth untrue. For the West African tourism industry, December is an exceptional time for luring in travellers. For second-generation African immigrants in Europe, the Americas and otherwise, the Christmas period has been long seen as a time for cultural pilgrimages to ancestral homes and returns to countries of origin. For me, it doubly served as a welcome contrast to the ongoing chaos of the western world. In a country where everyone looks like you, one finds themselves free to walk untouched by cultural prejudice, racism, and all the other things that thoughtless beliefs about our skin unusually award us. Still, Africa’s own battle with prejudice, an old foe called colonialism, is etched into its own skin years on. I could see it rear its head in the anglicised names of streets we zoomed past, the crumbling monuments gathering dust in city squares and in still-struggling economies ravaged by pillage. For diasporans, this makes travel to the region all the more sentimental; maybe investing in our countries of origin and supporting their growth through travel can ease the smarting of those old scars. The Nigerian cultural scene would certainly encourage this way of thinking. I’d noticed nearly every club, bar and party maker in Lagos had ramped up their December offerings to accommodate a lifestyle of partying, feasting and fast-paced living in the heat. Even as a mildly conservative partygoer, I found myself sweating amongst thousands at music events, wine-intoxicated in 24-hour Chinese restaurants and getting gradually accustomed to an average curfew of 4am (Lagos concerts never start on time). But my fellow passenger’s comment oddly put into perspective that a lot of people aren’t eligible for the invite. Nigeria is a nation where income inequality is both rife and obvious. Lagos can be visually likened to something from The Hunger Games: wealthy, billionaire-owned properties in the suburbs of Victoria Island and Ikoyi separated from self-constructed buoyant shacks in the Makoko community by a bridge spanning nearly 12 kilometres. With its street hawkers, beggars and local traders lining the streets, a car ride was enough to evidence that the experience of winter celebrants wasn’t likely felt by the approximate 90 million who live in extreme poverty. That means something uncomfortable for all of our travels. Maybe the strength in our walks is a result of the passports in our pockets, stacks of naira piled via valuable exchange rates and international accents that let us navigate our countries of origin in a way locals can’t. That makes me rethink the ethics of my travel, especially in a place I refer to as “home.”