Between Toghu and Winter Coats - A Year of Becoming in the UK | Martha Mburli Lingong, PhD Scholar

I arrived in the UK on the 12th of January 2025 as a Commonwealth scholar carrying more than a luggage of my beautiful Toghu wears, smoked meat n fish, palm oil, Baum Francoise, dried eru, njamanjama, some fried corn n gnuts and well put together Cameroonian spices.I carried with me the warmth of home, the voices that knew my name without explanation, the prayers whispered into my hands by my family and friends, and the quiet hope that education would somehow soften the distance between where I come from and the unfamiliar world I was stepping into.

Nothing, however, prepared me for how foreign familiarity could feel. I was just excited I have finally touched an opportunity on a global stage, and not just any type at that, but the most prestigious Commonwealth scholarship. The excitement in my heart, the Smiles, the endless hugs,laughter and pictures at the airport with loved ones were not enough to distract the one thousand and one questions that ran through my mind coupled with the deep feelings of anxiety.

Amidst all of these thoughts and feelings, one thing kept me going, I kept reassuring myself and whispering slowly, Martha you're up to the task as that has always been my motivation.

When I arrived and struggling with settling in, the first shock I had was not academic at all, it was domestic, ordinary, and deeply unsettling in its subtlety.

Shared accommodation in the UK taught me very quickly that independence here is sacred, doors remain closed not out of hostility but out of habit, greetings are polite, brief, and rarely followed by conversation, and I lived with people for months and still felt as though I was living entirely alone. I thought of the so much life at home and started feeling like I had made the wrongest choice ever.

I remembered how back home, sharing space means sharing life, food cooked together, stories exchanged freely, laughter filling rooms, noise acting as proof of presence. But here, my kitchen I would say was a negotiated territory, where your food is carefully labelled. Silence settles into corridors, and I learned, almost instinctively to cook quietly, clean quickly, and exist without taking up too much time and space.

The most dreading experience was the reality that shared spaces also carry unseen risks especially as that is not the form of renting, we have back home. It's either you're renting a single room all to yourself or a studio, apartment etc.

Not a room with shared spaces like kitchen, living room, maindoor etc.

One occupant nearly stabbed another, an incident that shattered every illusion of my automatic safety I had when I just came in. Police arrived immediately,an arrest was made and the case was taken to court. The place that was meant to feel like shelter suddenly felt fragile, uncertain, and exposed.

January to March were

 moments I never felt at home as It was the hardest period of the year. The heart of winter that was both brutally cold and relentlessly white and wet.

The days were painfully short, my morning broke around 9am and always felt borrowed since by 4pm night had already fallen swallowing my sense of time and everything. Rain soaked into everything, coats, shoes, most times my moods and the cold settled into my bones in a way I could not explain to anyone back home. I have never been so confused in my life, not just disoriented, but genuinely unsettled, asking myself repeatedly, what was happening? I woke up in darkness, moved through rain-filled days, and returned home in darkness again, feeling as though the sun itself had forgotten about me.  

Then the most fascinating were the pets.

I watched dogs being carried like babies, wrapped in coats, spoken to in full conversations, pushed gently in strollers through cold, wet streets, while cats had insurance, scheduled vet appointments, and carefully planned routines. I remember one of my classmates apologizing for leaving the class early cos he had an appointment at the vet with his cat. It was fascinating, tender, and deeply confusing all at once. In my world, animals guard homes, roam freely, and belong to the outdoors. Here, they are family, sometimes closer than people themselves.

I learned people are kind, but from a distance. Smiles are careful and very brief and help is offered politely and with your full consent, no assumptions. Then I thought of how back home, concern is loud, immediate, sometimes without consent and very unfiltered. I learned not to overshare, not to ask too many personal questions, and not to mistake quietness for rejection even though, on some days, it feels exactly like that. I remember asking my senior one morning, "how did you sleep after we exchanged the brief "hiyah" and her very polite response was,

Do I look like I didn't sleep well? And I quickly came in " Ohhhh nooooo, it was just another form of greeting."

The English Language I thought I studied both at the undergrad and Grad, betrayed me daily. English spoken here moved fast, swallowed at the edges, shaped by accents and cultural references that everyone else seems to understand instinctively. I missed words in lectures, jokes in conversations, and meanings in passing remarks. I nodded often then replayed sentences long after conversations have ended, and as such I realised that understanding a language is not the same thing as understanding a people. I witnessed first hand how people can be so intentional with the use of "thank you" and "Sorry". These would have been my first English words to learn if I were learning the language from scratch.

Academically, the transition was humbling in ways I had not anticipated.

In Africa, knowledge is often performed; you speak to show you know. In the UK, knowing is demonstrated through restraint, through questioning, critique, and careful citation. Feedback is brief, coded, and you're expected to read between the lines. “Develop this further” became a mountain. “Be more critical,” "we need to hear your voice in this review," felt personal until I learned its language.

There were days when imposter syndrome sat beside me in seminar rooms heavy with centuries of scholarship, days when I questioned whether I truly belonged, days when I read theories written about people like me, without people like me in mind.

Yet, slowly, my resistance evolved into reflective awareness.

I realized that my background was not a gap to be filled but a lens through which I see more clearly. My experiences of conflict, multilingual realities, and community life did not weaken my scholarship; they deepened it. I stopped trying to sound like everyone else and began sounding like myself, steadier, clearer, and more grounded.

This first year taught me that migration is not just movement, it is an opportunity for reflection, trimming, unlearning and relearning. You learn when to speak, when to observe, and when to endure.

Starting a PhD in the UK as an African woman is about learning to breathe in rooms not built with me in mind.

It is about translating yourself again and again without losing your meaning.

And as the first year ended, I knew this,

I did not just cross borders,

I am learning how to live within them.

I am extremely glad that despite the challenges, I was able to make it through the first year, setting a solid foundation for my research with the invaluable support from my supervisors and my loved ones. And now I'm set to begin the second phase of my work, which is the fieldwork in Africa. Yaaaaayyyyyyyy, I made it!!

Thank you 2025!!

Best of 2026 to us all!!

• Martha Mburli Lingong | Open Dreams