A few years ago I stumbled upon a good story in the library. As a graduate student working on what we in the United States call a dissertation, (the British fail to see what makes it different from other thesis and so still call it a thesis) I read a story about a man whose name is now legendary in my village. Perhaps it was more of a footnote than a full story. You see, it was a mere acknowledgement which now I have elevated to the status of a story not as an act of embellishment, but because of the importance that the story had for me. John Messenger, the famous American anthropologist was simply acknowledging the help he had from Mr. Udo Umo Ekam and how he came to know about Ikot Ekpene and spent a large part of 1957 studying the Annang culture, the town and its people. I had no Idea that someone knew Mr Ekam enough to include his name in a book, though I knew Ikot Ekpene was once a prominent point on the map. (These days, I challenge anyone to show me the town on a modern map.) Prof. Messenger said that he was a young man at Northwest University in Evanston, Illinois USA where he met the acquaintance of Mr Ekam who introduced him to the Annang culture and spoke longingly about the home he left behind. The stories that Mr Ekam told led to a renewed interest in studying Africans by Dr Messenger and resulted in a trip to document the lives of the Annang people. Some people may not know the contribution of Mr Ekam to the Annang story, but in my village, Mr Ekam is remembered as the man who spent “a long time in the white man’s land.” No one knew how long he spent abroad but some said he left long before WWII, and when he returned shortly before the Nigerian civil war, the land he left behind had changed. In a globalized world, the story of Mr. Ekam would have been different. Today Mr. Ekam would have simply been classified as belonging in the Diaspora. A record of his absence would not have been kept and he would simply be a frequent visitor to the homeland to attend meetings, celebrate important festivals and oversee building projects. He would be updated frequently on the progress of those he is responsible for paying school fees for. He would have had more than two-thousand friends on his Facebook page many of them young, and with the updates of his daily status, we would follow his every move and even like what he had for lunch. No one would dare see him as the man who went away for a long time. Today, the world has changed. Our world has indeed become smaller as a result of technology and it is impossible to forget the immigrants. Mr Ekam would have been one of Nigeria’s most important foreign earners, joining his compatriots to send back billions of dollars every single year. He would be a live wire to those he left behind and many would have depended on him for survival. The love of the homeland would have generated nostalgia to the point of becoming a spiritual issue, such that even meals eaten with fellow immigrants at home become a spiritual experience. Such times become a story-telling experience. Such experience generates a passion to see the improvement of the land. Today the immigration experience for the Diasporan does not change who we are but rather, it strengthens our identities as members of our communities. In recent years, the Akwa Ibom Diaspora has seen the coming together of groups and the replication and establishment of indigenous groups from the homeland. I brought Ati Annang to North America and today, Ati Annang has spread beyond the Annang borders to Europe and the Americas. Mboho Mkparawa Ibibio and Akwa Esop Imaisong have also spread outside Nigeria. The Igbos and the Yorubas have brought their groups and have recruited members to swell their ranks. Those who left the land have frequently invited those who are at home to enter into dialogue and plan for the welfare of the people. We have discovered that the immigration experience has only shown us that we have no other place to call home for as our people say, ‘no matter how high a bird flies, the legs always point to the ground. No matter how far we roam, I discovered a few years ago when I studied Nigerian immigrants, that we all dream of returning home someday. No matter how long we have been gone, many still think about home and so we return to build homes and we return to find wives or husbands not because we are in love, but because we want the spouse who speaks likes us and shares our experience. The ancient Greek word “Diaspora”,used for the Jews who were “scattered “ following the destruction of Jerusalem has found currency in our postmodern world. Like those ancient Jews, we Nigerians have held up hope that one day we will return to the land where our fathers died and many have adopted a sojourners mentality. We live in two worlds and entertain the notion that one day we will be rich enough to live the warm days of summer abroad and like birds return to the homeland during the dark and cold winter nights. We measure our progress or the lack of it, not by comparing and competing with our American neighbors, but on how far we have come from the life we left behind in Africa. We sometimes do become confused insisting that our children should be raised by the standards that we ourselves were raised. We insist that our children pay attention to education and we discount all other achievements that are not related to education. We struggle to go to school such that Nigerians are now the most educated foreign group in the United States. Despite all of our achievements, the Nigerian immigrant in the diaspora has a sense of loss. We grieve for the lost years that have past us by. Returning to bury his father, a friend once told me after his return that he felt that his life was wasted despite his Ph.D in nuclear engineering. He did not recognize his relatives who were born after he left. He missed the markers in the lives of his siblings. He did not attend birthdays, graduations and weddings of his siblings and as he watched the lifeless body of his father he thought about all the stories that he missed and what the man could not pass on during the brief phone calls they had. With this sense of guilt, the Nigerian fights to remain relevant at home despite the miles, yet we remain suspicious of ideas that sound too good for our Nigerian experience. Because we are striding two worlds, we often argue from the point of best fits often wondering about the place of religion in our experience. Yet we have so much to contribute and often we become angry that those in power do not take our experience, education and expertise seriously. We are eager to serve but no matter where we turn, we find the door shut as we stand outside with our rich credentials. In the Diaspora, we are foreigners and at home we are seen as outsiders. We in the Diaspora hope that future leaders know that times have changed. China, India and South Korea grew because these countries reached out to their citizens in the Diaspora and used them and their knowledge to partner with foreign companies and governments. Those in the Diaspora already know these governments and these countries. Most of us work at very high levels in companies, governments, research firms and educational institutions. We know how modern technology works. Many of us have the capital and know about the world economy and what has come to be called structural transformation. We can copy a page from the Asian history. Prof. Ezekiel Ette, Ph.D. is the Director of Social Work Research and Community Development at Northwest Nazarene University, USA. His latest book is: Nigerians in the United States: Race, Identity and Acculturation published by Lexington Books, Landham, Maryland. Prof Ette is also former Chairman of Ati-Annang in the USA, Canada and the Caribbean.