Letter: A long road to racial identity

TRACY BURT's testimony spoke to many of us who have undergone the same isolation ("Mixed-race adoption is a success", 31 May). If I had not been trans-racially adopted into an English family, I may not have survived the harsh life in rural Kenya. I was born in 1961 but my mother died when I was three months old. My father took me to a mission hospital from where I was fostered and later adopted. My adoptive parents sent me to boarding schools in Britain, where I encountered racism. At college in Kenya I was rejected because I was "too white", and in England black students rejected me for "not being black enough". I did not fit in anywhere.

Later I married and now have two mixed-heritage children. When they asked me about their identity I took them to Kenya, where I too needed to search for my identity. I found the village where my father lived; I met him and my grandmother for the first time in over 30 years. This journey has enriched us all. My children are more aware of their African heritage and I have completed a complicated jigsaw. I am a black British woman trans-racially adopted, with knowledge of my Kenyan roots.

Kageha Jeruto Marshall

Bristol