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‘Lady Lola’ Omolola Oyewusi
Yoruba Heritage Community Leadership and the Meaning of Belonging in Medway
TENS-2026-005 | 10 Black Voices of Medway 2026
Councillor and pastor Omolola Oyewusi, known as Lady Lola, describes making Medway her home through family life, community relationships and a commitment to helping others participate.
In her conversation with me for TENS, she reflects on moving from London, the racism her family encountered and the connections that gradually developed around them.
Her account also includes peer support, food distribution and work concerned with equality.
It records a form of belonging that grows through action while leaving room to acknowledge the difficulties involved in finding acceptance.
Choosing a quieter place
Lady Lola recalls living in southeast London with her children while travelling to work in Gravesend. The commute introduced her to Kent, where she began to imagine a different setting for family life. She was drawn to a quieter environment and to the possibilities she saw for her children.
Walderslade became home. By the time of the interview, she had lived in the Medway area for more than twenty years. Her description of liking village life is less about assigning a formal category to the place than about the atmosphere she wanted: somewhere quieter, with room for family routines and a different pace from London.
This is a reminder that migration stories can include several stages. Moving from Nigeria to Britain is one part of a journey; choosing where to live within Britain is another. Employment, schools, family needs and a feeling about a neighbourhood all help shape that decision. Medway becomes meaningful through these practical and emotional considerations.
Finding people who understood
The early years were not entirely comfortable. Lady Lola remembers being among relatively few Black residents in her immediate surroundings and looking out for other people who might share some understanding of that experience. Encounters could carry particular significance when familiar faces were scarce.
She also recounts racist hostility and damage around the family home. These are her recollections of what her family experienced.
They sit within the account because the story of settling somewhere cannot be told only through the reasons for choosing it. Feeling at home depends partly on how people are received once they arrive.
Her son's involvement in football helped create relationships locally. Shared activities offered points of contact that were different from being seen only as a newcomer.
The account does not suggest that sport solved every difficulty. It shows one route through which a family became more connected to the people around them.
Watching Medway change
Lady Lola describes the growing diversity she has seen over the years. Access to African food is one practical example. She speaks warmly about her friend Dola's contribution through food retail and the value of being able to find familiar ingredients locally.
In the joint conversation, friendship becomes a way of recognising another person's work. Lady Lola's account and Dola's separate account overlap, but their experiences remain distinct. The food businesses belong to Dola's story; Lady Lola's appreciation of them helps explain their significance to other residents.
The changing high street can therefore be read through everyday needs. A shop matters because of what people can buy but also because it can make a place feel more familiar. Ingredients, greetings and conversation may connect residents with memories of elsewhere while becoming part of their lives in Medway.
Support beyond assumptions
The interview summary describes Lady Lola establishing Magdalene Ministry as a peer support and food distribution initiative.
Its concern includes single parents who may feel insufficiently supported within traditional faith settings.
The emphasis is on recognising an unmet need and creating somewhere people can find practical help and understanding.
This work raises a question about who feels included within a community.
An organisation may have a shared identity or set of beliefs, while individuals within it still experience isolation.
Lady Lola's response, as described in the account, is to make support more tangible rather than assume that belonging to a wider group guarantees that support already exists.
Food distribution also connects everyday care with cultural heritage. Heritage is carried through relationships as well as through objects and events. The ways people respond to hunger, share resources and organise help can reveal values that might not be visible in a formal institutional history.
Equality within everyday services
Lady Lola's summary also records school governance with an equality, diversity and inclusion focus, alongside conversations about health inequalities. Among the concerns raised are whether services understand Afro-textured hair and culturally appropriate food. These examples bring questions of representation into ordinary institutional practice.
The issue is not simply whether someone is present within a school or hospital. It is whether the environment recognises the needs of the people using it. Hair care and meals may be treated as minor details, but they can affect comfort, dignity and a person's sense of being understood.
Her reflections on colonial influence and the return of cultural objects belong to the same wider conversation about recognition. These are perspectives expressed in the interview, rather than claims that every Nigerian or Black British resident holds identical views. Preserving them allows future readers to encounter how one community member connects local concerns with larger histories.
Making belonging practical
Lady Lola's contribution places family experience beside community responsibility. She describes the appeal of a quieter life, the pain of racism and the work of building relationships over time. Her account does not require Medway to be either an uncomplicated refuge or a place defined only by exclusion.
Within TENS, she offers a record of belonging as something people help create. Supporting parents, noticing gaps in services and recognising a friend's contribution all become part of the story. Her voice adds to the history of Medway by showing how residents work to make the place more responsive to the people who call it home.
The account also preserves a way of understanding leadership that is rooted in availability. Someone notices a parent without support, a cultural need being overlooked or an opportunity for neighbours to connect. Responding may involve an institution, but it can begin with conversation. Lady Lola's story gives those everyday practical human judgements a place within the record of how Medway's communities organise and care for themselves.
About this collection
An edited account based on the supplied oral-history transcript extract and interview summary. Personal recollections are attributed to the narrator; this article is not a verbatim transcript.
Supported by the Medway Heritage Place Project, with funding from Medway Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. With thanks to National Lottery players.
Interview, editorial adaptation and project direction by Michi Masumi — Anthropology, Art & AI. Published through the Benjamin Zephaniah Digital Archives & Library, an initiative led by Michi Masumi. Portrait photography by Michi Masumi unless otherwise credited; Leslie Haynes family photographs supplied through Russell Haynes, with original photographers credited where known.
Copyright © Michi Masumi 2026. All rights reserved. Copyright in individual contributions and third-party material remains with the respective rights holders.
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