The annual pilgrimage of the 'Detty December' crowd is a masterclass in the kind of cognitive dissonance that would make a lobotomy patient blush. Every year, like clockwork, thousands of people who spend their entire lives in the Global North complaining about microaggressions and the lack of cultural 'safe spaces' suddenly find the urge to fly several thousand miles to subject their 'ancestral home' to the macroaggression of their presence. It is called 'Detty December,' a name that sounds less like a celebration and more like a medical diagnosis for a particularly stubborn strain of narcissism. In the cities of Lagos and Accra, the festive season has morphed into a grotesque circus of identity politics and high-octane hedonism, where the pursuit of 'roots' is neatly packaged into a VIP table package with bottle service.

Lagos and Accra, for a few weeks, become the stage for a tragicomedy where the actors are the diaspora and the audience is a group of locals who can’t afford the ticket. The news reports that 'locals don’t really benefit,' a statement so blindingly obvious it borders on the profound. Since when has the arrival of a nomadic elite ever benefited anyone but the hoteliers and the people selling overpriced gin? The 'Year of Return' has mutated into the 'Year of the $200 Beach Club Entrance Fee,' and the diaspora is more than happy to pay it if it means they can post an Instagram story with a caption about 'finding their soul' while a local waiter, whose monthly salary is less than the cost of that single drink, stands in the background like a piece of human scenery. This is the dark side of the festivities: a hyper-stratified reality where the visitors’ fun is directly proportional to the locals' exclusion.

The friction mentioned in recent reports is inevitable. You have a class of people returning to a 'home' they only recognize through the filtered lens of Afro-pop music videos and curated travel vlogs. They arrive with their Western sensibilities, their demands for high-speed Wi-Fi, and their peculiar brand of performative Pan-Africanism, only to find that the actual residents of these cities are quite busy trying to survive the economic fallout of the very global systems the visitors represent. It is a collision of worlds where both sides are essentially grifting each other. The visitors want a sense of 'belonging' they can buy with a credit card, and the locals want the credit card. It is a beautiful, symbiotic relationship of mutual exploitation that is as old as time, yet treated by the media as a new and shocking development.

Let’s look at the 'dark side' the journalists are so worried about. They speak of noise, traffic, and rising prices. This isn’t a 'dark side'; it is just capitalism stripped of its polite, northern veneer. When the diaspora arrives, they bring with them a demand for luxury that the local infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle. The result is a hyper-inflated micro-economy where the price of a chicken dinner rivals the GDP of a small village. The locals aren't 'benefiting' because they are being priced out of their own lives so that a guy from Peckham or Brooklyn can feel 'kingly' for a fortnight. The diaspora claims to be bringing wealth home, but that wealth rarely trickles down past the gates of the five-star resorts and the pockets of the local political elites who are more than happy to sell off their culture for a few weeks of foreign currency.

The hypocrisy is the most delicious part of the 'Detty December' sandwich. These are the same people who, in London or New York, decry gentrification and the displacement of local communities. Yet, the moment they touch down in Accra, they become the gentrifiers-in-chief, driving up rents and creating exclusive enclaves where the only 'locals' allowed are the ones carrying the luggage. They claim to be 'reconnecting,' but they aren't reconnecting with people; they are reconnecting with a brand. They want the aesthetic of Africa without the inconvenience of its reality. They want the blue skies and the boiling temperatures, provided there is a reliable air-conditioned SUV to ferry them between the beach club and the brunch spot. It is a sterile, curated version of heritage that ignores the struggles of the very people they claim as kin.

Ultimately, 'Detty December' is the perfect metaphor for the modern human condition. It is a frantic, expensive search for identity in a world where identity has been reduced to a series of consumer choices. Whether it's the diaspora looking for a soul in a bottle of Hennessy or the local elites trying to squeeze every last dollar out of their 'brothers and sisters,' the whole spectacle is a testament to our collective shallowness. There are no heroes here, only tourists and those who tolerate them for a fee. The 'friction' will continue until the money runs out or the 'motherland' stops being a trendy backdrop for TikToks. Until then, enjoy the party. Just don't pretend it’s anything more than a glorified shopping trip for the ego, conducted on the backs of people who were never invited to the guest list.