by S.I Ohumu 

 

I came here on the shoulders of many, great, expectations. It was the glow-up. Smart Benin girl who never fit in with a talent in the arts must move to the big city. But you lose when you do things that are expected of you.

I should have learnt this lesson from my experience juggling being in my first year of university and last year of secondary school, simultaneously, to give my parents bragging rights, though I didn’t. Or I forgot to. So I moved.

Now I am moving again.

I am leaving Lagos. It is lonely. Alone with 20 million hurrying bodies. Inside of a room, a flat, with persons you know in their own rooms, their own flats, the great distance caused by traffic jams enough to keep you apart. Alone with yourself so you run to whoever you can be with, taking the shit, grateful for a body to see, touch, talk, fuck.

I am leaving Lagos because it is noisy here . And in my head. There is too much. Of everything. Too much hurrying. Too much worry. Too much of cars. Too much of agents. Too much of no friends. Too much of want. Too much of the feeling of keeping up but falling short. There is not enough of anything. Not enough of actual air. Of space. Of quiet. Not nearly enough of peace and joy. Freedom to take flight. There is not enough freedom in Lagos. Not enough of the things which make us truly much. Solid hefty things. Lagos is noise and too much and not enough. It is a shiririrrrrr. It is many stones joined together, haphazard, with no weight. Nothing at the middle.

***

It is my last weekend in Lagos and I have come to move my things. For months I have been afraid to be back here. I left on a bad note. I didn’t finish a manuscript I was editing. I didn’t say goodbye at my job. I told the people at my house nothing. I wrote that deeply flawed essay. I absolutely do not want to be back here.

But fear will always be there. So I do what I am slowly learning to do: allow myself somethings, hold back others. I do not confront former work or abandoned manuscript. Not yet. I stay with Ayọ̀ at Ìyànà Ìpájà. On Sunday night I have wine with a married man–bad tasting white wine–while sitting beside a pool in Lekki, and talk to him for hours, until it is too late to go home. And because I don’t want us to get a room, I say, ‘to the beach’!

We walk. I think I belong to the water. He says everybody thinks that when faced with the sea. There is a line of rock I am unwilling to walk. We look at sex workers. At how the wind makes their cigarette fire fly. Sit on a log. He touches my butt. We sleep in his car. The next day, I’m sick with fever. Can mosquitoes live in saltwater?

On Tuesday I uninstall Uber and Taxify. Forget Rele. My heart holds on to Freedom Park.

***

Hearing Edo being spoken became a balm. A balm given to a bus conductor at agege. A smile returned to boy with blue glasses at Cafe Neo. A celebration of familiarity. Everything else was the other.

***

I am leaving Lagos because I am happy now. I have cleaned the room in my head. Put the hangers in the wardrobe, the broom in its place. I am able to wake up every morning. Go to sleep without crying. Look at trees, touch the sky, love a man who loves me back. I am able finally to be accountable. To understand action, reaction, consequence. Interested in navigating the fragile maze of growing up while retaining my childlike wonder. Realizing clichés come from good places. I am able to think good. Solid. I am leaving Lagos because only the solid can fly. You are fraught and froth and secured to the dirt floor in a city with everything but what is required.

I am leaving Lagos because it is not for me. It is this simple. Do not speak in absolutes. No city is the sunken place. This one is magic to many others. Now the question: But is that you? Are you here because you want to be or you think you ought to want to be? Because you need to be here? Sync like a mac to an iPhone to this rollercoaster of a coastal city? When last did you let yourself rhyme?

I want to rhyme. I want to go home. I only know home is home by having been in a place that isn’t home. I am leaving Lagos because it isn’t home.

Lagos isn’t home. Not to me. Is it to you?

N.B: To the ones not squares, wearing boots at ring road, counting down until the big move, why are you leaving? Your family doesn’t feel like family? To find your tribe? Opportunities? Your difference does not mean you must live in Lagos. Granted it’s a hub but is it the only? Should it be? The country big. Ask Fuád, e big. If you want to create, bad air fast bus quick fingers frothy people fun hangouts may be the way. Trees, slow paced, quiet may also be the answer. I am not saying do not go, only consider. Place it side by side another. It is not a given. Sometimes the way to start anew is to stay. Sometimes it is to go.

Go home. But first, find it. Wherever that is.

_____

S.I Ohumu is a mostly happy twenty-two-year-old living where art, food, and environmental sustainability meet.