Farmed Out - Privately Fostered

In today's episode of MaryLayo Talks, I’m with guest, Sami Folorunso, to talk about her atypical experience of being fostered. Sami's of Nigerian heritage, and she shares what life was like growing up with white British parents whilst having her Nigerian family very much in the picture.

Questions included:

• What’s 'Farming'?
• What led you to being fostered privately?
• When fostered what was life like?
• Share one or more of your best childhood memories?
• How aware were you that you were different from other children's family set-up?
• Did you have any negative childhood experiences linked to you being fostered?
• What has been your experience of being exposed to two difference cultures?
• Tell us about the joys/challenges of having two sets of parents?
• How do you think your fostering background has shaped you as a person?
• Bible scripture to support spiritual wellbeing.

Take a moment to delve into what may be 'beyond the smile' - listen in to the conversation.

MaryLayo's spiritual wellbeing tip: Meditate on the bible scripture John 1:12-13.

Connect with MaryLayo:

LinkedIn

Instagram

For help in dealing with mental health related matters, please seek specialist advice and support if needed.

Welcome to Marylayo Talks, a podcast that discusses mental health and

spiritual wellbeing, before we jump in, there may be episodes that are particularly

sensitive to some listeners, and if that applies, then I.

Hope you'll be able to join me.

Whenever you feel ready and able.

You it.

Today's episode is with guest Samiat Foronzo.

Who, when growing up, was fostered in an unusual way known as farming.

So I started off by asking her, what's farming?

So farming, that kind of term.

I only really got introduced to it when a

friend of mine said to me, oh, have you seen this film that came out?

And I said, no, it's called farming.

And I said, it sounds like your story.

So I went to have a look to see what the film was about and it was about this Nigerian boy

who was given to a white family in Tilbury, in Essex, not far from where I was fostered.

And it's his experience of his life with that family.

And so when talking to other people randomly, it seemed like farming was a thing back then,

which I didn't really realize.

So, yeah, it's only recently I've come

accustomed to knowing what okay, what farming isn't.

Actually, I was farmed.

Really?

Do you know what, when I first heard that term, and it was only recently, I kind of

thought, that sounds like a bod name.

Think of I don't know if it's cattle or

agricultural, whatever it is.

So I only found out when I was in my adult

years that my older brother and sister had actually been, let's call it farmed.

And the way it was even casually mentioned by my mum was a shock to me because I just didn't

know that they'd been fostered.

And I remember her saying that she went there

unexpectedly to the house where they were staying and she found them in a bit of a

state, so it looked like they weren't actually taken care of, so she basically took them out.

Let's find out a little bit more about what led to you being fostered privately.

So my parents came to this country in the late, early 819.

So the plan had been for my dad to bring my mom here because she had some family here and

then he was going to go to the state and do some studying for a time.

And so while my mom was here, she needed to work.

And the place where she was staying with family was quite small, so she was looking for

somebody that could look after me.

So I think it was an auntie of Herder told her

that she knew someone had done a similar thing, so she could ask to see if there was a

family that she knew that could look after me.

And so I think family spoke to the people they

knew and got into contact with a family.

And my mom went down to go and visit that

family in Essex with my granddad and my auntie, and everyone seemed to like each

other.

And so, as the story goes, it was my foster

mum, she's going, oh, can we take her today? And my mom was like, oh, no, we can't.

She hasn't got no clothes.

We'll come back next week.

They love you that much.

Everybody seemed to get along.

And it's when I hear that story, I was like,

okay, so nowadays they do DBS checks and you have to go through all these checks.

So none of that.

It was just when I think about my experience

and how I was placed with my foster parents, I was like, God, you were looking out for me

from the very beginning kind of thing, because I could have been placed anywhere.

There's so many stories I've heard.

So, yeah, that's how I ended up with my wife.

And how old was you at the time?

I was six months.

A little bit older than six months to very young.

Yeah, I guess.

What was life like being fostered?

So when I think about it and I think about my memories of that time, I think of

very happy times.

For me, it was like it's like this was normal

to me.

Having two sets of parents was normal for me.

So I didn't see it was like anything like, oh, I'm different to anybody else.

This was just how my life was.

And I'm not one to I think that's my nature,

to pick out things.

So it was normal for me to have white parents.

And my mom would come down on every other Sunday on the train, so I called her Mummy

Train, and she would come down and she'd visit us and she'd do my hair and bring Jammie

Dodgers.

So I always knew after that, and that's what I

remember always.

She was always in our lives.

It wasn't like, oh, Mum wasn't there because she came down every two weeks.

It was just normal to have her there.

And we'd have roast dinner, and she would tell

me, I always remember when I have a roast.

I think about those times when Jackie and

Paul, that was my foster parents, made me a roast.

And she would sit down and watch some period drama on the TV.

So never now when she sees period drama, it always just reminds me of that time.

It was a pleasant time, and it was just normal to me.

So basically every fortnight, your biological mom, your mom would come and visit.

So she was always consistently and regularly there in your life, and that was just part and

parcel of life, having two sets of parents.

Was you also in contact with your dad?

Not as much.

And he was overseas, I guess.

Right.

So did you have your own time with your mum, or was it always when she came to visit that

you guys spent time together with your foster parents?

So on the holidays, so Easter and Christmas and summer holidays, we would go

back to visit with my mum and stay with her uncle.

So we'd all just pile into the house with my cousins.

So those were always happy times because I'll be able to play with my cousins around the

holidays.

So, yeah, we did get to spend alone time with

her, which was nice.

It was nice and it was difficult because there

was a transition there.

But I feel like it allowed me to know about

parts of my culture.

It wasn't like I never knew about where I came

from and my culture.

So it was kind of like having two mes.

Yeah. So what were your rather positive, happy memories that you can remember

from that time?

Well, I think when I think about it, simple things.

My first dad had an allotment and I always enjoyed going with him to go to the allotment

or going to the dump, because that was always fun, because if we went to the dump to go and

take up rubbish, that means that we could come back by the horses.

And then I would say, dad, can we feed the horses?

He'd always say, that okay, we can feed the horses.

And he would teach me how to put my hand out so that the horse doesn't bite your fingers

and feed horses apples.

It was those kind of things.

Just simple things, like baking cakes with Mum in the kitchen or Mum teaching me how to walk

around them sitting room and exposing me to people like music that if I'd grown up just

with my Nigerian family, I would not know about.

People like Connie Francis and Zillow Black and learning.

Like, it was like being in two different cultures, right.

So it was very rich, but also difficult sometimes to transition between the two.

And I get that because I guess being born and brought up in the UK, very exposed

to, obviously, UK culture, but then also growing up in a Nigerian household where we

didn't really follow culture too much, but enough to really know and be familiar with how

to respect elders and those kind of traditional ways.

So I get that.

Probably not as much as you, because you were,

I guess, in the deep thick of it, but I guess that comes with just the enrichment in your

life in terms of your experience of having those two experiences.

One of the things you mentioned to us about that transition in terms of the two cultures,

I don't know if you've seen it, there's this TV show, it's not running now.

It turned.

It's called this is us.

Okay, do you know where I'm going with it? Yes.

There's this guy, one of the characters, Randall, and he was adopted into this loving

white household.

But he did feel different because he didn't

look like his siblings, he didn't look like his parents.

Was that your experience as well? Or am I just fantasizing and basing it on this

TV show?

It's funny you say that because it was my aunt that said, oh, you got to watch

this program because this is us.

There's a guy in there and it reminds me of

you.

Yeah.

So I did.

I watched it.

And there are similarities because there is the thing about my head didn't flick like

everybody else, flick side to side.

And I remember trying to put in a towel on my

head and pretending, so I want my head to flick too.

All the love was there.

But there were slight differences.

There was differences in the culture, in the differences in how we kind of like my

biological mum, how we greet people and things like that, and the respect aspect and then

having to like, okay, switch this up in your head.

And you can just go back to what I call the normal way of life, where there isn't all

these kind of practical protocols and things like that.

So mom and dad in Essex, they were very kind of protective of us.

And so I feel like that love cocooned us.

And it's amazing when you have been given that

love how much more confident you feel as an individual because knowing that you've always

got somewhere that you belong or people that will have your back.

I could see similarities with the program in regards to the hair, like how managed, how to

do my hair.

And she tried, bless her, I remember the

hairstyles that she would try and do for me.

You'd plat one bit because she didn't know how

to do cornwork.

There was things that was challenging for

them, I guess, as well as for us.

But how aware were you in terms of your family set up from a very young age, so I

guess going to school, like how parents would drop off their children, how aware were you

that your background family set up was different and that wasn't the norm or when did

it click? I don't know if there was that click, really.

I don't know if it ever did.

It was just us.

Maybe mom and dad did.

Maybe they experienced it from their family,

but maybe it's just because I've got such happy memories of that time of people or as a

child.

Maybe you don't notice things in that way.

Just sounds like you didn't really have any or many negative experiences in terms

of feeling different.

I think it's more so when I came back and spent time with my mom, I realized

how different we were because growing up with mom and dad in Essex, we did everything like

they did.

And so when we would come back and spend time

with my cousins and my aunties and uncles, it was like, oh, why don't you do this or don't

you do that? But when the language was spoken, we didn't

understand it.

So that was difficult, then I knew, like, oh,

we're different.

That's where I felt they're different because

we didn't go to school with them, or we would say when people would come out, oh, yeah,

they're going back to the nanny, and all that kind of thing.

And that's when that was highlighted for me, not so much when I was with my foster parents,

more so when I was with my mom, because that was different, because we didn't spend all of

our time with her.

So that pattern of from six months old to how old was she?

Was it nine? That was regular life.

And then came that time when you moved permanently with your mum.

Do you actually remember that day when you yeah, right, okay, talk us through that.

And were you even prepared? Did you know beforehand?

I always remember that day because if you know, like, when you have landmark

moments so it was the end of a six week holiday and we're all getting prepared to go

back home.

And by that six weeks, by the end, I was ready

to go back home because we've had all our fun time and I just want to get back because I had

my own room, my sister, and it was like I was looking forward to going back to start with my

new my new year in my school.

And I was going to get a teacher that I really

liked.

And I remember it and it's like, oh, yeah, I'm

going to be in year five and I'm going to have such and such teacher, and I'm really excited

to have her because she's a really good teacher.

And I'll go back and tell everybody how my summer holidays was.

And I missed my mum and dad in Essex terribly.

So it was always a relief to be able to go

back.

Go back to the norm.

Yeah, go back to the norm.

And then I don't know who told us it was my

cousins, actually, it wasn't even my mom.

It was my cousin that said, you guys are not

going home.

I said, what do you mean we're not going back?

No, you're not going back, you're staying here.

And then I remember them sending my older sister to go and telephone my foster parents,

they're not coming home, they're not coming back.

And I thought, we both thought that we're never going to see each other again.

And I just remember crying and crying and crying, but I couldn't show anybody my tears

because to me, by showing them my tears, it was like saying I didn't want to be here, I

didn't want to be with my mom.

And why do you want to upset her?

To make her feel like you don't want to be with her?

So all of that was like, hidden? I hid it, but it was really painful, of

course.

Was that the same with your siblings, then?

Did they hide it as well?

It was just the three of us at the time.

My older sister, she knew about it, she always knew that summer, so it wasn't a shock to her.

My younger brother was three or four at the time, so I don't think he really understood

what was happening.

Only later when he asked me, when are we going

back home?

Right.

And it was hard for him because he would just cry at night.

Okay, so I guess there were like three different responses.

But your older sister, she already knew, so she was more prepared and therefore maybe not

so much of an outward reaction.

There was yourself that didn't have that

outward reaction, but you were unprepared, but you kept it I'm not saying your sister didn't

keep it in.

And then your younger brother, because he was

so young, he expressed it openly.

But I can understand, of course, how hard it

was for not just yourselves, but also for your parents, your foster parents and probably even

your mum, just knowing that transition and how to manage it.

Yeah. I think it was devastating for mom and dad in Essex.

I know afterwards she'd speak about her having a breakdown after it happened kind of thing,

because she didn't think that she was going to see us again.

So it was heartbreaking for them because we had been their kids for so long.

That means you spoke to them after you moved back permanently with your mum,

biological mum.

So how did you maintain or get back in terms

of that relationship with your foster parents?

I don't know the specifics of it, but I think it must have been two.

Moms must have spoken or my sister must have spoken with them, because I think the reason

why they didn't let them know there was a big fear factor with my mom and with that side of

the family that if they had told them we wasn't coming, they wouldn't let us go because

they could see how much they loved us.

So I think that was their biggest fear.

So once they realized that there was no substance in that fear kind of thing, that

that necessarily wasn't going to be the case, then that allowed for the communication to

flow.

I think it was maybe the following summer

where we got to go back.

So now it was a sure, yeah, we went to mom and

dad for summer holidays, easter and Christmas in Essex, and we lived our lives with Mum

here.

Right, okay.

And that was how it was every year.

Yeah, okay.

Right.

Yeah.

That's interesting.

Balmy in it, but it just sounds.

Like, okay, I get it now, actually.

I get it.

I get how roles have reversed in a sense, and how it then made sense to keep that

communication, that relationship, but the other way around.

And I guess it was always from day one, I guess, or I'm imagining that that was always

going to be the plan that you and your siblings would permanently move with your mum?

It was just the when, I guess, and that when came when you were about nine years old.

I didn't realize that.

I thought this was always going to be no, I

was going to go to school here, go to secondary school here, I was going to get more

job here.

That thought never entered, I don't think, my

mind, that that was going to change.

I think that's why it was so hard to leave

them.

And how did you then learn or grow to just accept that change?

Because that's a significant change, I think.

Well, we've grown up in Nigerian households, isn't it?

So it's a lot different to how it is now, where the communication is more so between

parents and their children.

Back then, children, when you didn't

necessarily have that dialogue with your parents, children where you sit down, you read

your book, you make yourself practically invisible so that they don't come and trouble

you and tell you to do chores and whatnot, or you get in trouble.

So it was kind of like just being if I just could hide and hide myself away from kind of

trying to run away from the situation, making my own world, that's what I felt like I did,

to kind of cope with it.

And naturally, I'm a person that's always

looked at the positive sides.

And I didn't realize that this was something

that is just, I think, innate, because Milesman would say, you're oblivious to

everything.

You see that?

Didn't you see that? And I'm like, not necessarily, because I'm not

looking for a hiccup, I'm not looking for a bad thing, I'm not looking for something.

I like things that are nice, I like to concentrate on things that are nice and it

will give me joy.

So I guess even back then, that was like a

coping mechanism of concentrating on the good aspects of things.

Yeah, I get it.

You're an optimist, basically.

Yes.

And what do you think your fostering background, how do you think it shaped you as

a person? Or do you think it shaped you as a person?

Almost definitely tolerance.

Tolerance for different cultures, tolerance

for different experiences, where people have come from, knowing that you can love anybody,

doesn't matter if they come from you or not.

But it's very funny how for me and my younger

brother, who were basically with them from when we were babies, I'm very much like my

foster mom used to be, and my brother is very much like my foster dad.

And I see things that my brother does, like, gosh, you're just like dad.

Just like dad doesn't like to spend money.

Very thrifty kind of thing.

Buyers will buy loads of clothes, but don't wear them and put them in a wardrobe and still

wear holy ones.

Sorry, Len.

Sorry.

I'm exposing you.

Yeah.

And I think being fostered made me just have

that more tolerance and love and compassion for people, where they've come from kind of

thing.

And knowing that not everybody has.

A.

Certain way of being brought up.

It can be looked different and it doesn't mean

that it's wrong.

It can look all different ways and able to

navigate in different cultures with different people as well.

Yeah.

You know how you had, let's just say, those two worlds in terms of the two

cultures that you were in, do you think that over time you've been able to merge the two

together or float in between or them not being so siloed more effortlessly as time's gone on?

I think so.

I think I'm a lot better.

I used to find going into an environment where

the Nigerian culture is very prevalent, quite hard for me, just because also because of my

nature as well.

It always seemed very harsh.

Harsher and only through growing up I realized that it's not harsher or harder, that it's

just different.

Okay, that's a nice way.

I can see why you mentioned being an optimist.

It's different because I guess when I first went back to Nigeria, it clicked and I

realized that I understand why we as a people can be like that.

Because you have to fight for everything.

You have to fight for your space, even on the

road, because it's so busy, it's not easy.

So if you want to get something, you have to

fight for it.

And that means that there's a power within

side of you to be able to survive.

Because we are survivors, there's a lot of

things that we've had to overcome.

So I understand why that is.

But I guess I think living with my mom, I got to see now, not just the harshness, but I

think it's the first time I saw her cry and I was just like, wow, you cry?

Yes, they cry and feel as well.

It's just the process of emotions is different

to how I would recognize them, but it doesn't mean that they don't have them.

Sure. Yeah. So lastly, so if someone is actually struggling, let's just say they're

coming from two different backgrounds or they are in two different worlds, let's put it that

way.

And then maybe they're struggling with

belonging or feeling different or they're having to overcome some sort of transition, a

sharp transition.

Do you have any advice or tips that you've had

to follow yourself or you've learnt over time or maybe you're even still learning that you

could share to others?

I think having grace for yourself and knowing that it's okay to feel the way

that you feel and just really recognizing that I'm feeling this way.

I think I try to escape a lot of the times from my feelings.

I used to read a lot so going into books and stories and that was a great coping mechanism

at the time, but didn't really deal with the trauma of it.

So just recognizing and owning where you're at and being able to identify and just giving

yourself the grace to process it.

And I think for me, knowing that I belong with

Christ has just helped me to feel loved and accepted, regardless of which world I think I

belong to.

I belong to him.

I found my identity in Him.

And so that has also just helped me to feel

that it's okay.

I still, even now, don't feel like I quite fit

here, I don't quite fit there.

But it's okay because that's what good purpose

for me to be.

And because I don't fit necessarily quite so

neatly, I'm able to do things that others might not be able to do because they do fit so

neatly.

Right kind of thing.

So there's a reason for your journey and it's finding out what that reason is so

that your purpose can be fulfilled.

And it's in that fulfillment you find the joy,

the happiness and the healing.

That's what I would say.

Yeah. That's beautiful.

Thanks, Sammy.

Thanks so much for sharing your story and those words.

So thanks to you and also to everyone who's listening.

Thanks for joining me on Mary Liar Talks.

Hope to see you soon.

Sammy mentioned about belonging to God, so here's a spiritual wellness tip that

you can meditate on.

It's John, chapter one, verses twelve to 13

and reads but all who believed Him and accepted Him, he gave the right to become

children of God.

They are reborn not with a physical birth

resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

Thank you for listening.

Do follow, follow and join me again.

Next time on Marylayo Talks beyond the Smile.