As she stepped out of the car onto the streets of Nigeria in her floral summer dress, Oona Agbi-Colin couldnât believe her eyes when she saw all the people who gathered to greet her.
Her delighted relatives had lined up on the roadside to hug and cheer her on as she set foot in the small town of Afikpo where her Nigerian father had grown up.
Dressed in their traditional Igbo tribe colours, they danced all around her to welcome her home.
The joyful and public celebration of Oonaâs heritage was something she never expected.
For most of her adult life, she knew nothing about her father. There are no official figures for the number of mixed-race children born in Irish-religious run institutions to unmarried mothers.
But Oona was possibly one of hundreds born when these institutions were running, and none of her African family knew about her. A Commission of Inquiry into mother and baby home homes which was completed in 2021 detailed how there were 275 mixed race children in Bessborough in Cork and St Patrickâs home in Dublin â out of the 18 institutions reviewed.
Five years ago, with the help of the Association of Mixed-Race Irish (AMRI) and a DNA test, Oona finally traced her fatherâs family, only to learn however, that sadly, he had passed away.
However, when his family in Nigeria were told of her existence, they wanted to pay tribute to her for the 55 years they missed out on, by hosting a ceremony in her honour.
On April 18, 2023, the mother of one who grew up in East Cork flew by herself to Enugu in Ebonyi State.
Though nervous, she was determined to meet the relatives of the man who had given her such a distinctive part of her identity, notably her tight curls and brown skin.
âWe couldnât seem to match up my husbandâs holidays with my cousinâs holidaysâ said Oona. âAnd then she was leaving to visit her daughter for six months and I feared another year would slip by, so I made the decision to go on my own. I couldnât wait anymore.â
As she arrived at the home of her ancestors, dozens of her family flocked around her. They sang and danced, as they took her by the hand into their home.
It is a scene that will forever be etched in Oonaâs memory she says.
âIt was magical, I canât fully describe it, it was all I ever wanted, just to know where Iâm fromâ, she said.
âSome cried when another cousin explained to them all who I was, he said âShe has come all the way here to find her rootsâ.
âThey gave me a name âAmarachiâ which means, âby the Grace of Godâ. For my family, it was by the Grace of God that we had found each otherâ.
Oonaâs âhome comingâ in Nigeria marked the end of her 30-year journey to trace her biological family.
Placed with her adoptive family in Cork as a baby, the older she got, the more she questioned her heritage.
âI wanted for nothing with my adoptive familyâ she said. âI had four brothers and my mother and father; I was the baby. But I was also a curiosity for people in town, there were no other black people there, so they were fascinated by the little black girl.
âMy hair was so curly, nobody knew how to handle it. I went to school, I was educated, but I wanted to know where my colour came from, and nobody could answer that, thatâs a very difficult thing to take as a childâ.
To date, a small number of mixed-race Irish African survivors of the mother and baby homes have come forward to tell their stories.
Many were born to single mothers after their fathers came from the African Continent to study in medicine, law, government administration, and other subjects.
At the time, African countries who became independent in the 1960s were seeking skills to run their newly independent countries.
This initiative was supported by the Irish government which provided funding to foreign students.
Such students attended a number of colleges including the Royal College of Surgeons, Trinity College, and University College Dublin (UCD).
By 1962, at least 1,100 students in Ireland were from Africa, from countries like Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa, and some of them fathered children here with Irish women.
Most of these children were born to single women in mother and baby homes.
The legal status of âillegitimacyâ survived until 1987. It was thus shameful to be a single mother during this time, but a mixed-race baby came with an even bigger stigma.
Even when adopted, the law favoured the privacy of the mother, and adopted children were not legally entitled to their birth records.
If no father was referenced on the birth certificate, it made tracing him all the more challenging, particularly if he was from Africa and returned there after his studies.
UN Human Rights experts have criticised the Irish government for allowing âsystemic racismâ to happen to mixed-race people who were in State institutions between the 1940s and 1990s.
âSome of us were not even placed for adoption, we were deemed unworthyâ said Oona, âAnd that was because of our skin colour.
Oona Agbi-Colin was born in 1968 in St Patricksâ Mother and Baby home on the Navan Road in north Dublin.
She spent three months in the home before being placed with a family from Cork.
âIt took three years for the adoption to become official,â said Oona. âMy adoptive mother is still alive, but my father passed away four years ago.
They loved me, but they had no guidance about adoption, especially transracial adoption, it wasnât done in those days. There was no understanding of attachment, bond and loss for anyone who was adopting. There was no focus on the child.
âIn those days, you went into a room and chose a child you wished to adopt, that doesnât happen now, but thatâs the way it was, unfortunately.
âI was treated the same as my brothers, but back then, there was no discussion about adoption, we didnât talk about it, they just saw me as one of them.
âBut my African roots got lost in that, and I kept it all to myself. I didnât want to speak up about it. I didnât know how without sounding ungratefulâ.
Oona attended the local Presentation school and later the Loretto Convent secondary school.
She doesnât remember seeing any black people in her white community growing up â only the missionaries who visited the school â and she found it âoverwhelmingâ at times because she didnât like attracting attention.
âEveryone knew my name, and who I wasâ she said. âIt was obvious I was adopted. People would say things like, âdo you like living here?â.
âYou walked into a room and people would stare or nudge like I couldnât see.
âThere was racism, mostly by boys but some adults too, of course I didnât know it was that at the time. I didnât have the vocabulary. I was called names like âbrillo padâ, because of my hair, I was told how lucky I was not to have to wash as often because of my colour too.
âThere was no integration. There were no Afro hairdressers either. And there still isnât a lot of choice today in 2024.
âIdentity was not talked about, and I had no role modelsâ.
Oonaâs mother never got the chance to tell her she was adopted, instead, she remembers playing outside her home as a child when one of her friends broke the news.
âI was very young and wasnât aware then of my difference. I ran into the house and asked my mother, who was shocked, but said, âyes youâre adoptedâ.
âI remember the news being on in the background showing a war-torn African country and that was all the images that ever came out of Africa and an African man was talking and I thought âthat could be my fatherâ. Thatâs when I started to really think about it allâ.
As Oona grew into her teens, she felt socially isolated, had no boyfriends, and was never asked out by anyone.
âTeenage years are hard anyway, but I was a bit of a rebelâ she said. âI was good at maths, but I never did what I was told in school. I wanted to be a fashion designer and my mother signed me up to do a foundation course at the Grafton Academy in Dublin.
âI was very excited, but dad didnât want me to go, he was nervous about me moving to Dublin. They were very protective.
âI was around 16 when I made up my mind to leave, I worked at the House of Donegal in Cork City, so I saved up and moved to London.
âI came back for a short time, but I went back to the UK again and stayed. The first thing I did when I got there was straighten my hair.
âI stayed among the black community and there was no racism. I was accepted and I fitted right in.
âWhen I visited my friends in the Irish communities in London, I did experience racism.
âPeople would ask âwhere are you from?â and Iâd say Iâm from Cork, they would look at you strangelyâ.
While living in the UK, Oona began to trace her family by writing to St Louiseâs adoption society in Dublin.
She was contacted by a social worker who met with her in London and took a train ride to meet up with her biological mother who was also in the UK at that time.
âShe had another child after me. I was angry with her at the beginning, upset for leaving me in a home, but it wasnât until I saw the film âPhilomenaâ that I understood more about her story and what went on back then.
âSheâd been telling me, but I didnât believe her. I had no idea. It was a difficult period for us.â
For five years Oona enjoyed living in London where she met her husband Christophe and later moved to the French Caribbean.
During that time, the couple returned to Cork to marry among family and friends.
âMy son Benjamin was born there 26 years ago, but I wanted him to be educated and brought up in a safe environment in Ireland,â said Oona.
âWe came back and settled in 2002 and he is part of the reason I went looking for my African roots.
âHe was very open to my search because he knows Ireland wasnât as diverse as it is now.â
A breakthrough in her search for her father happened when Oona saw an interview on RTĂâs the Late Late Show with Rosemary Adaser, co-founder of the Association of Mixed-Race Irish (AMRI).
Ms Adaser was also born in a mother-and-baby home and had traced her roots.
âI couldnât believe there were others out there like meâ said Oona. âI got in touch with Rosemary, and it went from there. I met with a lot of support people along the way, including Conrad Byran who is also mixed race and had traced his family, and he helped with the search.
âMy biological mother told me my father was Biafran and had been studying in the Royal College of Surgeons.
âAll my life it was my colour, my difference, that made me want to find him.
Oona contacted the Royal College of Surgeons and discovered that there was only one Biafran man there that fitted the profile.
Earlier this month, Oona detailed her search when she spoke in public for the first time at an event in the Epic Museum in Dublin called âThe Search for African Identitiesâ organised by her friend and advocate for survivors, Conrad Bryan.
The panel involved mixed race survivors of some of the institutions and examined the journey they undertook to find their biological fathers.
âI got a tremendous amount of help along the way, most of it was done online during covidâ, Oona said.
Through her research she discovered her father was one of the few who returned home during the Biafran war. He set up a clinic there and settled with his family.
However, he was killed in a car crash when he was 55.
Tragically, he never met Oona, who does not believe he knew about her.
âI traced my fatherâs other children, and I talked to them, and they said knowing their father, he wouldnât have left me in the home if heâd known, his Nigerian family said that too.
âI had a positive meeting with a niece in Dublin a while back, but I havenât met up with my siblings as yet.
âI kept tracing my fatherâs family though and I found them online.
âOne relative in London agreed to do a DNA test which resulted in a match of first cousinsâ.
As soon as the pandemic ended, Oona booked her flight, arriving in Nigeria last year to meet her family for the very first time.
âIâm so happy that I did itâ she said. âIt filled in so many gaps and contact is very much ongoing.
âI have seen photos of my father and there is definitely a resemblance. He seems to have been a nice man, but I now have that connection and that means everything to me. I got so much peace by going.
âUnless you experience adoption, itâs very hard for others to comprehend the need to find your biological family, itâs not about trying to upset anyone, itâs just about wanting to know who you are and where you come from.
âIn the words of Marcus Garvey, âA people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.â
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