RELOCATION: DIALOGUE FOR A NEW AGE

Prologue

Happy new year!!!

Oh my God!, it’s a new year: I’m going to be twenty-three.

I need a plan!!!!.

My sweet sixteen plan has yet to work out so far. Per that plan, I should be a lawyer, a wife, and a business owner with a handful of employees. Not sure what the business I’m supposed to be running is; I would need to consult my journals for that, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the current trajectory of my life. Or does it?

I suppose I should have a new plan for my life since I’m not one to “go with the flow” and let things happen. Everything has to be thought out for me. I have to write it down for it to be real. My overactive imagination only responds to order, and chaos breaks me down.

So what would I do?

Where would I live?

How would I live my life?

As a twenty-two-year-old born in and living in Nigeria with crumbs of privilege, aspiring to a life of largesse with privilege and influence and/or impact as a consequence is a given. But what those aspirations should look like is not, and this is exactly what I have refused to think about. But now I have to, time is running out. It’s FYB season. They’re going to blow the whistle on me soon.

Dialogue

Cooped up on my two-by-two bed in a space that has served as my living quarters for the past three months of an eleven-month semester, I am thinking of the fact that I have to take a five-minute trip downstairs to access water. I need to take a shit, and then I decide against shitting altogether. My body is not pleased with my decision, so I distract it with the thoughts of a better life, one that does not involve shared bathrooms and dirty water.

Terrible decision because now I’m spiraling. Oh! I need a pen. Here is what I’m thinking.

My time here would soon be up. Hell! I’ve been running overtime for the last year or so. “Here” is Obafemi Awolowo University, where I am studying law, trying to do well at it because somehow, my law degree must eventually bend to my dream of making healthcare accessible and affordable for all —quality healthcare— it is always necessary to emphasize.

How would I do that? I have absolutely no idea. What am I doing about it? I am writing a long essay on the Medico-Legal Implications of Compulsory Vaccinations and Quarantine. How is that supposed to help? I don’t know Why are you writing it then? Because writing is one of the things I do best. Really? Yes, I have recently just discovered that about myself, and I kind of have to write something to get out of here. That’s so long-winded. Why didn’t you just become a medical doctor? Someone in my family already did that,…..repetition is boring. BS! I know; I just can’t. I can’t survive in despair, and to be a doctor is to be constantly surrounded by pain and hopelessness. Plus, I sucked at maths, and health practice is not health policy. You’re smart, you should know that. At least doctors know exactly what’s next after school. Shoot. Why is there no house job for lawyers? I need a year to think. You’ve had four years. Even though!

My mind has wandered off again, yet I am no closer to answering the question of what I will be doing in four months. Is law school an option? One thing that my last semester examinations have shown me is that I am spent. I do not enjoy this anymore. Learning about what the law says is not exciting anymore. To put it frankly, I don’t care. And if all I have heard about law school is true, I need to care, or to enroll would be a suicide of my soul. But not enrolling would be heartbreak and an unnecessary risk, one that I am not willing to take.

How do I go home to tell my hopeful parents, who have given just as much (or even more) as I have to this dream of a robe and a wig, that I do not like the law that much? That my grades are not a reflection of passion but an inbred excellence they have drilled into me. That what I find more compelling to do is be with my whimsical lover —-writing— who leaves me out cold every market day, unsure of its love for me.

There is really no way. So law school it is. After all, like a friend once said, it is better to go to a bar and not drink than not be able to get into the bar at all or something along those lines. Then there is the question of when. Would it be in 2023 0r 2024? Would my faculty be ready in time this time, considering their track record is to never be in time? I think not.

Where would I be? (Before or after)

Writing IGSCE, TOEFL, GRE, or whatever exam I need to write to leave this country? Or slaving away at my little desk in my room in that quaint house I’ve lived in since I was three, rushing to meet deadlines, driving myself crazy with perfectionism, creating content while at it, and pretending to have a plan like everyone else?

What is this obsession with leaving anyway?

September 15, 2021, is one of the weirdest days of my adult life. I was in Lagos, the city of my reluctant affection, specifically at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, saying goodbye to one of the people I love the most –my sister. She was leaving to start a new life in a place where no one she knew except her husband lived. Courageous

Here is something the ‘stay and suffer’ proponents of Japa never say, IT IS HARD AND DRAINING, in all the ways that something can be hard and draining. Not everyone would leave as soon as they wish to, not everyone can leave as soon as they want, not everyone has the ability to leave, and not everyone wants to leave. Yet, we all want to live.

My sister tried many times before the gatekeepers finally swung the gates open. Before then, it was a time of living in limbo, being in a long-distance marriage, and having those meaningless conversations of lovers at weird times because of time zones. When the opportunity to leave came in, everyone was happy. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t elated, but I tried my best to be happy for her. It was what she wanted. It was what she fasted and prayed for. I had to be happy, and of course, I had to keep it hush-hush. After all, are we not Nigerians?

But, it also meant that one of the people I call home was moving farther away from me, and home was no longer two Micra rides away. It would mean that one year later, she would have a child that I still haven’t met but who somehow manages to fill my heart with bubbles. It would mean that during the eight-month strike of ASUU, I was under the same roof as my parents tendering their adopted kids (chickens), washing dishes, and not being able to eat spaghetti and rice, and beans as often as I would like. Her apartment with the green walls and the promise of sweet treats and African Magic was no longer there to provide the succor of relying on another person without feeling like a burden.

While I recognise this as incredibly selfish, it doesn’t stop me from feeling as I do. I mean, how many more nieces and cousins would grow up not knowing that I am Àlàkẹ́ Akọ̀wékọwúrà, a self-proclaimed bad bishhhhh?

October 14, 2022, my heart swelled with pride as I watched my other sister swear to devote her life to the care of others. Surrounded by family, I watched as she and her classmates pledged to commit their lives to a noble, self-immolating cause with all of us as witnesses, and the Quran, the Bible, and a Cutlass as anchors. It was beautiful to watch, but it was a long time coming.

The journey to this moment took eight long years, constant headaches, debilitating migraines, anxiety, and bouts of depression. Yet, I cannot let myself be completely happy or relieved. The fear that I might soon become a virtual participant in the life of yet another person I love is crushing.

Nigeria has paid some of its dues. Providing its younglings with affordable higher education, but she also turns around and kills their dreams, their currency, their hope, and snuffles life out of them. So she must lose the best of her offspring, at least most of the best. I do not feel the compulsion to leave. I do not want to leave forever.

Do I want a foreign degree at an ivy league school that speaks volumes before I appear? Yes. Do I want my kids to have passports that open the gates of immigration to over a hundred and fifty countries visa-free? Yes. But this is not the shaper of my ambition or the things I want to aspire to. Hell! What do I even aspire to? Is this one of those times that I choose not to try? It is almost as though I am too cool to fail; therefore, I mustn’t try to be a failure.

I recognize that I might be cocooned from the more hurtful realities of being a Nigerian. Like the healthcare system failing you at a time you need it the most or the police threatening to kill you for owning a laptop. But I have seen it happen often enough to know that it could be me one day. Yet I do not want to leave.

Perhaps the possibility of a transgendered, transabled society is scarier than the possibility of a BAT presidency. Or the fear of sweeping bouts of loneliness more real than living at home and not enjoying basic things like electricity. Regardless, whatever it is, I have less than 120 days to figure it out.

Scary times. Scary times indeed.

Relocation is not just the promise of ‘saner climes’ or ‘quality healthcare and education.' It is also the reality of families torn never to be sewn back together; of love harder to find because not many speak your language. It is the reality of food your body rejects and sex that’s just a fetish. It is relegation, a constant feeling of being an outsider at home and abroad, and a constant worry about what is happening back ‘home.’ Relocation is painful. My family is becoming a virtual reality, and my friendships augmented by devices.

Oh God! I need to dye my hair. Shit! I already did that. Okay, now I’m going to get abs. It's hard to think at the gym with all those gojos perfectly toned men.

Epilogue

I'm alone in a room I share with three other people, and it's extremely hard to focus. It's dark. I have just written my heart out; now it's time to sleep. My mind won't shut up about a cockroach crawling into my vagina and making me infertile, so I get up and change into tights. This is against all medical reasoning, but I do it anyway. And now my mind won't shut up about rats smothering me to death. I am shocked that I am incapable of being alone.

I love my space. You cannot move my pen without sirens setting off in my head. Yet I cannot sleep alone. I remember the black hand from last semester. The one that tried to rob me or rub me. I'm not sure. I didn't wait to find out before texting my group chat. Now, who am I going to call when next I do not feel safe if I up and leave or when they leave?

And this is how I know relocation will bend, if not break me.

Àlàkẹ́ Akọ̀wékọwúrà🍒