Heritage at Home: Our Sierra Leonean Nigerian Family Story

There’s a TikTok sound that lives rent-free in my head. It says: “I want to walk into your apartment and go yep…an African lives here.” Every time it crosses my feed, I don’t just relate — I heart those posts, so I can come back to them later for design inspo because SAME. Because heritage at home is not something I stumbled into. It’s something I’m building on purpose — one framed lapa, one hand-carved figure, one pot of cassava leaf at a time — inside a Sierra Leonean and Nigerian household planted in the middle of Indiana.

If you read my previous post on Afro-modern interior design for the modern African family, you already know where my head is. I talked about that distinct aesthetic so many of us grew up with — the heavy wood furniture, the furniture you weren’t allowed to sit on, the vibe that hit you the second you walked through the front door. You didn’t need a label for it. You just knew. Plenty Africans lived there.

This post is the next layer. This is me refining that idea into something deeply specific — not Afro-modern in the abstract, but heritage at home in my living room. Sierra Leonean on one wall. Nigerian on the other. American by address. African by everything else.

Yep…An African Lives Here: What Heritage at Home Actually Looks Like

Let me walk you through my house the way that TikTok sound intended — like you just stepped in and immediately got it.

You’d see hand-carved pieces from Freetown Big Market that didn’t come from a home decor website. They came from Sierra Leone. Packed between my many custom made outfits in a suitcase that was already overweight.

You’d see framed maps. Art with meaning. And right there in the living room — the piece that stops every conversation — my mother’s lapa, framed and displayed where my children see it every single day.

That lapa is not “African fabric.” That lapa was used to tie me to my mothers back when I was a baby. She wore it. She lived in it. And now it hangs in our home because I lost her, and this is one of the ways I make sure my children know her anyway. That is what heritage at home looks like when you’re building from what you managed to keep.

Two Countries on One Wall: Heritage at Home in a Sierra Leonean Nigerian Family

Our home is not one heritage. It’s two. And I wanted the walls to say that clearly.

I found these incredible custom map prints on Etsy — the kind where you choose any location in the world and they create a clean, minimalist map centered on that exact spot. I ordered two: Kenema, Sierra Leone — where my family home is, in the Eastern Province — and Ijebu-Igbo, Nigeria — where my husband is from. They hang near each other. And I love that my kids can point at the wall and say that’s where Mommy’s family is from and that’s where Daddy’s family is from with the same confidence they’d say their own names.

Honorable mention to the other Etsy find I have: a print that shows Sierra Leone and Nigeria colliding with a heart in the middle. Two countries. Two lineages. One family. Is it a little cheesy? Sure. Is it hanging in our joint office with full pride? Absolutely. Because that collision is literally how my children got here.

The Coffee Table Book Trick — With Our Own Spin

If you’ve ever followed an interior decorator, you know coffee table books are a staple — they’re one of the easiest ways to add personality to a room. I took that same idea and ran with it. I’ve got books in the display cabinet in my living room, stacked on the entry table, scattered across surfaces throughout the house. Same concept, just my spin: I try to have a mix of books that reflect us and who we are as well as ones that are just visually appealing.

I’ve been intentionally curating Afro-modern coffee table books that center African art, design, photography, diaspora fashion, and Black visual culture. Not because I’m trying to make a statement — but because when my kids flip through them on a random afternoon, or a guest picks one up in the entryway before they’ve even taken their shoes off, the images they see reflect our world. The New Black Vanguard. Sierra Leonean women. Diaspora art and design. That’s the quiet version of heritage at home. You don’t always have to teach it. Sometimes you just have to leave it where they can find it.

The Heritage at Home You Can’t Hang on a Wall

Everything I’ve talked about so far — the carvings, the lapa, the maps, the books — you can see it. You can photograph it. But some of the most powerful pieces of heritage at home are invisible. They’re in your kitchen, in your playlist, in the names you chose for your children, and in the stories you tell at bedtime that nobody else in their school has ever heard.

Think about what fills your house when no one is paying attention. The food you cook on a Tuesday — not for a party, not for a cultural event, just for dinner. The language you slip into when you’re on the phone with family overseas. The music playing during Saturday morning cleanup that your kids don’t even realize is teaching them something. That’s heritage at home working in the background. No frame required.

And then there are the keepsakes — the things that can’t be replaced. The photographs. The jewelry from someone who’s gone. The stories your mother told you that you’re now telling your children, hoping you remember enough of the details. If you’ve lost a parent, you know how fast those details disappear when you don’t anchor them somewhere (thats why I started this blog). A recipe. A voice memo. A name you gave your child that carries the weight of someone they’ll never meet.

You don’t have to do all of this at once. But if you’re a first-gen parent reading this and thinking I should be doing more — you’re probably already doing more than you realize. The food counts. The music counts. The language counts. The name you fought to keep on that birth certificate? That counts most of all.

How Our Children Locate Themselves Through Heritage at Home

Here’s the thing about all of it — the walls, the books, the food, the music, the names — it only works if it’s consistent. Not a special occasion. Not a cultural awareness month. Not a trip back home once every few years. I want my children to locate themselves in their heritage every day, in the most ordinary moments, without anyone narrating it for them.

And it’s working. They know Kenema is in the Eastern Province. They know their father is Yoruba. They know that jollof rice is deeply personal, that cassava leaf takes hours, and that both are worth every minute. They didn’t learn that from a textbook. They learned it from living in a house that never let them forget.

How to Build Your Own Heritage at Home: 5 Starting Points