Charcoal Ink blogs about hybrid identities, “It used to hurt me a lot as a child because I was so proud of Tanzania despite the fact I lived abroad but when people constantly told me that I wasnt a real Tanzanian or a real East African — I then knew that this notion of a real ‘Tanzanian’, ‘West Indian’ is bogus because circumstance and environment creates who we shall become. I feel like I have a hybrid identity in that I am an East African girl with a London view of life. I always like saying that I am a Tanzanian girl via the airport of London: if that makes me less Tanzanian, then so be it. I know where my roots are.”