When I arrived, 20 years later, it was as if I hadn't left. Yes, the landscaping had changed, but the foundation was left the same. The structural feeling of home embraces you, as you pass the walls that sheltered me and my ancestors from the elements of life, and the evils of mankind. Beyond that, it is the smell that surrounds you, as it squeezes you in a timeless embrace. The smell was that of burnt firewood, burnt metal pots and pans, smoked and charred into the red clay walls that hit the back of your nostril like a sharp knife as the spices and ingredients wafted into your senses. I was back after 20 years, yet my present memories persisted...just locked in a time capsule, waiting to find a new purpose. The compound was as I remembered it, but so was me to it. I was excited with nostalgia. My family homestead: that of my forefathers, father-fathers, fathers’ kingdom. Now my own. I sat there in the same room they all once sat, a modest 12 x 18 x 8 ft space with it dilapidated walls, which shrouded our history with tales from afterlife. Here I sat, where meals they shared, words they spoke, hardships fought, love kindled, lessons learned and memories faded, but not washed away. Hanging on the walls were pictures, in frames, a visual soliloquy of generations long before my time that people may forget, but history would never erase. Life demands it. A litmus test of growth, as layers of memories leach unto another from the core of the homestead down to offspring.
The red furniture from our old home stood mismatched with the tatted wooden bench with the fallen arches from many uses beyond its initial purpose. The stories it would tell. To see them as they were felt like you were in a museum, and they were not to be sat in, if even for a short while, for fear they may break. But maybe, just maybe, if you sat on them long enough, the stories these inanimate objects had heard would permeate through your skin, and make you believe it was not just a memory, but a living dream. To my left was the room my grandmother slept in, and to the right, the kitchen prep area where Jeri cans were used and reused interchangeably for drinking and cooking water, palm oil, palm wine, and kerosene. It was also my first encounter with being drunk as a result, chugging the sweet fermented nectar of the palm wine I mistook for water to quench my thirst. I stumbled onto the compound in my drunken 6-year-old body. I laid there feeling the energy sap out from my breathe, as the heat and inebriated state of alcohol poisoning took its course. Memories live on.
The rain poured, as it does in Nigeria, where drops once pitted against the zinc roofing, now streamed unto the channel grooves unto the ground below. The rich red hue of the earth blessed the soils nutrients, but brought challenges to its caretakers. As the latter made it a disaster to create roads and throughways to travel anywhere in under 30 minutes. As a result, streets eroded like sugar cubes in water, creating puddles of muddy waters – the anathema to the people’s blues. The silence of time.
If you’re in Nigeria, yes, anywhere in Nigeria, just plan on waiting. You will wait in traffic, wait in line, wait out of line, and wait for the line to move so you can enter a different line. You get the point. But, I…love…my…country. I love its people, its places, the things it lacks and the things that make it beautiful. It is those same things that make it a conversation piece on the mouth of its citizens, as they are the only ones that can speak truthfully about its inadequacies, yet are encouraged by its potential. It saddens me to see the ratio of poverty in this day in age, an unexpected scale stricken by what can only be thought of as indifference. That is the culprit. I have never been more humbled by the smiles on faces I pass on the street as they exchange pleasantries, and divulge their hopes and dreams. How proud it makes me to see them in their ethnic clothing, their community and their semblance of God in everything, I mean everything that they do. Afrocentricity redefined by dignified leadership, accountability, and respect. And maybe that’s just it. This is a land, a people stagnant in their ways, holding unto to cultural values that stitch in outside influences, but in fact are unapologetic about their timeless identity in the face of modernity.
Some say home is where the heart is. Well, I carry it with me every day. Made in Nigeria, I'm proud to be Nigerian, despite its challenges, its wasted material amidst a potential of people that give me hope and despair in the same breath. They are its engine, its beloved, its heart, although heavy at times, they carry it with pride every day. Beating at their own pace, yet in unison. I am happy to call this place my home, despite my best efforts, my heart speaks for itself.
