Dear Diaspora Children: Before You Ask Where Our Money Went, Look in the Mirror!
By Dr. Shaaban Fundi
African immigrant parents must prepare for retirement. But their successful children should also remember who financed the runway from which they took off.
There is a difficult conversation coming to many African diaspora families.
For some, it has already arrived.
A successful son or daughter, perhaps in their late twenties or thirties, looks at aging immigrant parents and asks:
“Why didn't you prepare better for retirement?”
It is a legitimate question.
African parents should save, invest and prepare for old age. Our children should not be our pension plans.
But before our children conclude that Mama and Baba simply failed financially, perhaps they should ask another question:
Where did the money go?
Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable.
Look in the mirror.
Some of it went into you.
Tulianza Maisha Upya
Many East African immigrants did not arrive in America, Canada or Europe at 18.
Tulikuja ukubwani. We arrived as adults.
Some came at 30, 35 or 40, carrying degrees and professional experience from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere—only to discover that qualifications do not always cross borders as easily as people do.
A teacher became a nursing assistant.
An accountant drove a taxi.
A university graduate stocked shelves.
A professional returned to college at 40.
There was cultural shock, winter, racism, unfamiliar systems and the strange experience of becoming a beginner again in adulthood.
Yet rent had to be paid.
Children needed food.
Tuition was due.
Insurance was due.
So people worked.
Sometimes two jobs.
Sometimes school during the day and work at night.
And Africa did not disappear simply because we crossed an ocean.
Mama anaumwa.
Send money.
School fees.
Send money.
Funeral.
Send money.
A sibling has an emergency.
Send money.
Then America sends its own invoices: mortgage, healthcare, car insurance, college tuition, property taxes and retirement.
The African immigrant becomes a small international development bank—with one exhausted depositor.
Thirty years later somebody asks:
“Baba, why isn't your retirement account bigger?”
Jamani.
Because We Invested in You
Many African immigrants rejected one Western idea: that adulthood automatically begins with financial separation at 18.
We didn't say:
“You are 18. Get out.”
We said:
Stay.
Finish university.
Save your money.
Eat here.
Use my car.
Don't worry about electricity.
Don't worry about groceries.
I will cover the insurance.
Take the internship.
Finish your master's degree.
We will manage.
Some children remained home into their mid-twenties while earning respectable salaries.
Mama was still cooking.
Baba was still paying the mortgage.
The adult child was saving.
Then at 27 or 29, the child bought a first home.
Wonderful.
Hongera sana.
That achievement belongs to the child. Hard work deserves recognition.
But let us not rewrite the financial history.
If you earned $80,000 while living at home without paying market rent, somebody subsidized your wealth accumulation.
If your parents paid your insurance while you saved for a down payment, that was an economic transfer.
If you graduated without crushing debt because your parents helped with university expenses, that was capital.
It simply never appeared in your investment account.
The myth of the completely self-made diaspora child needs examination.
You may have built the house.
But somebody helped build the runway.
Parents, We Are Not Innocent Either
Now, wazazi, let us not hide behind sacrifice.
Not every missing retirement dollar went toward watoto.
Some of us overspent.
We bought cars we didn't need.
Houses larger than necessary.
Clothes.
Endless contributions.
Harusi.
Birthdays.
Send-offs.
Kitchen parties.
Another WhatsApp group.
Another mchango.
Another dress code.
Some of us have accumulated more vitenge than mutual funds.
We can laugh, but retirement is serious.
There were Saturdays when perhaps the wisest financial decision was:
“Leo siendi kwenye sherehe. Hii $200 inaenda kwenye retirement account.”
And yet we should also understand what those gatherings meant.
Migration can be profoundly lonely.
After spending a week navigating another culture, a Tanzanian, Kenyan or Ugandan gathering offered something money cannot easily measure.
Swahili.
Pilau.
Mishkaki.
Music.
Arguments about Simba and Yanga.
Stories from home.
For a few hours, nobody mispronounced your name or asked where your accent came from.
Sometimes the party was entertainment.
Sometimes it was therapy.
The answer was not to eliminate joy.
It was to find balance.
Caught Between Two Systems
The first-generation African diaspora occupies a peculiar historical position.
Many of us supported our parents in Africa while simultaneously supporting children in the West.
Our parents came from a system that said:
Children care for their aging parents.
Our children increasingly inhabit a system that says:
Every adult is responsible for his or her own financial future.
We may therefore become the generation that practiced African collectivism upward and downward—but receives Western individualism in return.
That possibility frightens many immigrant parents.
And it explains some of the bitterness surrounding this conversation.
But fear cannot become entitlement.
Our children are not retirement accounts.
Parenthood is not a loan agreement.
We cannot arrive at 70 carrying receipts:
Tuition: $70,000.
Car: $20,000.
Wedding: $25,000.
Food from birth to 28…
Hapana.
We chose to have children. We chose to sacrifice for them. Love cannot suddenly become an invoice.
But children should understand the reverse principle.
You cannot embrace African collectivism while the money flows toward you and discover radical Western individualism when Mama and Baba become old.
That is not independence.
That is selective memory.
We Need a New Diaspora Social Contract
Neither extreme works.
The traditional African assumption that children will automatically finance their parents' old age is increasingly unrealistic.
But the hyper-individualistic idea that adults owe nothing to the people and communities that helped create their success is equally impoverished.
We need a new diaspora bargain.
Parents should prepare for retirement as though their children will never give them a dollar.
Save.
Invest.
Reduce debt.
Understand pensions.
Plan for healthcare.
Write wills.
Discuss housing and long-term care before a crisis arrives.
And children should build independent lives while remembering that independence has a history.
Sometimes your success began years before your first paycheck.
It began when Mama worked an extra shift.
When Baba postponed something he wanted.
When somebody paid tuition.
When somebody kept a bedroom available.
When somebody said:
“Finish school first. Tutajipanga.”
So, Where Did the Money Go?
Some African immigrant parents genuinely failed to plan.
We should admit it.
Others, however, accomplished something that financial statements cannot adequately measure.
They crossed oceans.
Started again.
Worked beneath their qualifications.
Returned to school.
Supported parents back home.
Raised children between cultures.
Paid tuition.
Provided housing.
Bought cars.
Sent remittances.
Buried relatives.
Built communities.
And somehow produced a generation whose starting point was dramatically ahead of their own.
That is not necessarily financial failure.
It may simply be wealth transferred in another form.
So, Mama na Baba:
Jipangeni.
Prepare for old age.
Do not make your children your pension plan.
But watoto wetu, before looking at your parents and asking:
“Where did all your money go?”
Look at your education.
Look at your career.
Look at the years you lived without paying market rent.
Look at the opportunities you could pursue because somebody else absorbed the risk.
Look at how far ahead of your parents you were able to start.
Then look in the mirror.
Huenda sehemu ya pesa mnazozitafuta ipo hapo.
Perhaps some of the wealth you think your parents failed to accumulate is standing right in front of them.
No, you do not owe your parents your entire future.
But surely their sacrifice should mean something.
Perhaps the new diaspora bargain begins not with an invoice, but with memory, responsibility and gratitude.
/ZNK
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