Finding Home Elsewhere

How Black Women Expats Choose Their Best Countries for Life Outside of the U.S.

Before you pack your bags go, consider scouting and relocation pro tips from these "serial" Black expats. Image credit: Vlada Karpovich

“What made you decide on Lisbon?” 

I’ve been asked this several times. Unlike the last time when I moved abroad, no one seems surprised that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the U.S. They just want to know how I knew this other country — the devil I didn’t know — was the one for me. The easiest response sounds similar to a newly engaged woman being asked how she knew her fiancé was husband material. “I just knew.” 

Pro Expat Tip 1: Take a Scouting Trip (Maybe More than One)  

A scouting trip allows you the opportunity to explore a new country before

fully committing to a move. Sometimes multiple trips might prove necessary. In May of 2024, I went on a month-long scouting trip to Portugal.  Leading up to my visit, I’d spent three years doing similar extended stays in cities around the world that my research suggested would be an ideal forever home for me. I decided my search was over by my second week in Lisbon, plotting my path to relocation before I’d even left Portugal.  

It’s a complicated feeling to find home in a place that’s not really your home. A country to which you have neither ancestral nor birthright ties. In my travels, I’ve encountered other serial expats who have felt at home in lands far away from the geographic territories that raised them. In speaking with two such women, I learned feelings of finding home elsewhere can vary, depending on the connection you feel to your birth country.  

The U.S. Never Felt like "Home" for Me 

Born and reared in Houston, Texas, 50-year-old Adalia Aborisade spent most of her life in the United States. She married young, reared children and taught in the public school system. Eventually divorcing and becoming disenchanted with her career, she left the U.S. in 2016 and relocated to Honduras. She would find her way to Kuwait and China, too. Aborisade now lives in Mexico City, having been settled there for six years.  “I consider [Mexico City] to be home, not just for now, not an extension of home — but it is my actual home,” Aborisade says. When pressed about how she knew it was “the one,” Aborisade struggles to provide a definitive answer. “It’s hard to explain,” she says. Like many of us who “just knew” when we arrived in our country of choice, Adalia felt an ease and peace whenever she was in Mexico City.  

She speaks of what she’s come to understand about the heart of the country. Embedded in the foundation of Mexico is a spirit of collectivism.   

Pro expat tip 2: Research Laws That Might Reveal a Country’s Values  Aborisade cites, for example, the country’s constitution states everyone has the  right to safety and healthcare and all other human rights. The implementation of these rights can be troublesome, she says. However, Aborisade has seen how foundational  those ideals are to the culture of the people.  

“This country has free healthcare. It functions inefficiently sometimes,” Aborisade chuckles. “However, they at least have it. Whereas in the United States, we’re arguing about whether or not healthcare is a right or a privilege.” Though not immune to capitalistic extraction, Aborisade doesn’t feel the weight of constant consumption and corporate greed that impacted so much of her personal and professional life in the United States. If home is where the heart is, Adalia has had six years to examine the heart of Mexico. She believes it beats due to the care of the community; it operates through collective wellbeing. 

Seeking the Same Love of Blackness, Community and Family 

Donnalee Donaldson is a 34-year-old program director working in International Development. Born and reared in Montego Bay, she’s the proudest Jamaican you'll ever meet. She left the country while only 16 years old to attend college and eventually start her professional career in the U.S.   

Donaldson’s connection to Jamaica is rooted in her abiding love of Blackness. Her appreciation of community and family. “I am from a neighborhood where children went to the same schools,” Donaldson says. “Neighbors would stop by to share whatever fruits were in season. And taxi drivers would take us home without directions because they knew where everyone lived.”  

Her entire childhood consisted of Black folk from all walks of life serving as touch points to the world around her. It was this safety she felt in her close-knit community that made the United States feel like it could never be her home. For the last decade, she has lived in the most thriving cities in Africa: Kigali, Rwanda; Nairobi, Kenya; and currently Accra, Ghana.  

She’s lived away from her homeland her entire adult life. Though she visits Jamaica frequently and is in regular communication with her mother, Donaldson’s adult home has been the land of her ancestral roots. For this Island girl who still cherishes memories of unannounced guests stopping by the house, Donaldson didn’t anticipate recreating a home that replicates the feeling of belonging that comes with people from miles around knowing whose daughter she is.  

“I do think that experience is easier to get here [in Ghana] than in the U.S.,” she admits. Like Black Americans, most Jamaicans descend from West Africa. Because of the transatlantic slave trade, the 2006 Census estimated that 90% of Jamaicans can trace their roots to the West African region.  

Pro tip 3: Look for Cultural Parallels   

Leaving home doesn’t mean leaving behind everything you love about home.  Donaldson has appreciated the familiarity of the food, the similar

trends in music and the overall comfort of a culture that feels like it fits. This, she concedes, can make Ghana feel homier than other countries where she’s lived. 

Many of us who move to foreign lands can attest to our adopted country welcoming us in ways that we’d never imagined. The first time I left the U.S., I was propelled by an inexplicable urge to explore elsewhere. This time around, I’m moving with more intention.     Pro tip 4: Recognize Your Passport Privilege    Living abroad can feel like a respite from racism and white privilege we live in the United States. However, upon leaving it’s important to make peace

with the privilege an American passport affords. Travel bans, visa denials and crackdowns don’t affect us the same way they do other Black passport holders. Like Aborisade, I’m less loyal to the country of my birth. I can,

however, appreciate it for providing me with the privilege to choose anywhere else in the world to live.  

There’s freedom and joy in this complex feeling of finding home elsewhere. The serial expat understands this freedom and joy on a cellular level. We just can’t always explain it.