Cornrows

  

My gaze traveled to the back of the room and landed on a beautiful girl. It was spring semester. There were at least three such girls in the class that were cute and adorable. “Women with fine features”, I named them in my head. I nursed a wishful thinking in them even though from my math there was no hope in the future. 

One of them grabbed my attention. She was fair and beautiful, a bunch of black hair sitting atop an oval face. She made brilliant contributions for the class discussion. She made another submission on the day she came to class with cornrows. I watched her in admiration from afar. Situations like this abound where I preferred to watch someone adorable from afar. 

 

If I really like you and there is no future, I ignore you. Just like certain somebody we know.

 

If I don’t like you, which means there is no future, I can go ahead and indulge you. Like another certain somebody we know. 

 

These were my feelings towards the girl with the cornrows. The Indian girl came to class wearing the typical African hair style. I planned to talk to her after class. But she was gone. I was unable to meet her. I was unable to meet her because I was caught up in a side talk with the professor after the lecture. I shrugged; I was indifferent. I wished I had met her, but since that didn’t happen I was also not bothered. 

 

I stored her name in my head. She was active in class so her name was not difficult to know.  The following week, after class, the girl came to pass by my side. The professor was celebrating her birthday and brought cakes to the class for the students. The Indian girl with the cornrows walked forth and helped herself and her friends from the cakes. I spoke to her on her way back. 

“Give me some minutes”, she said, “I will be back”. 

 

She delivered the cake to her friends and came back. She sat in the chair opposite me. I told her what I wanted to talk to her about last week before she spirited away was about her cornrows. “Do you also have cornrows in India?”

 

“No, my neighbor is a Ghanaian”, she said, “she did it for me”. She then spoke about her race and nationality and revealed that she was not Indian.

 

Surprised, I asked, “Did someone ever tell you that you look like Indian?”  

 

“Yes,” she said. She lived in Chicago in a predominantly Indian neighborhood. She was Ethiopian, but because of her facial looks the Hindus in the street often mistook her for their own. We laughed at the amusing incidents and how the Hindus attitude quickly changed after realizing her identity. We proceeded to talk about college. Small talk extended longer than we thought until we suddenly realized we were the only souls left in the class. We exchanged contacts and walked downstairs to catch the bus. 

 

I tarried at least two days after the conversation before I sent her a message. We continued to exchange pleasantries via text messages over the coming days, talking about classes she took and her life. Classes were fun, she said, and was doing Art and Religious Studies for her other classes. “That’s cool. You’re a smart girl,” I said. In the coming days, the girl and I would be having a date. But it was not really a kind of romantic date even though it was. I sent her a message asking her out when I got back home. It was already dark. I talked to her only briefly in class because I had to catch up with the professor. The thing I wanted to say was I was wondering if I could see her over the weekend, but then she said she would have been in Chicago by then. 

 

She replied after some hours, a pretense at being very busy. “Oh, I’ll be in Chicago next weekend, not this one,” she said. “But I don’t mind getting a coffee and chatting about class and your experience in the city.” 

 

“That’s fine”, I texted back after careful consideration. I needed to parse what she meant. Was there some sort of misreading and misunderstanding? I sent her a message nonetheless, details about the date, the hour and the rendezvous. 

 

“Yes, that would work”, she sent in the message back immediately.  

 

Since then, I had been conflicted about the whole thing, asking myself questions about her intentions. Thoughts were twerking in my mind. Moreso was the fact that a dead silence reigned on both sides, no text messages or calls, which compounded my situation. It was difficult to tell what we really were. I could see her on Snapchat, her WhatsApp was active, unlike typical Americans, but I could not talk to her. She used WhatsApp for family, and as I assumed, for some purposes back in Ethiopia where she had a small memory of and tenuous relations with. The silence was awkward. I needed to have a sense of what she was thinking. I was torn between whether to go ahead with the date or not. I decided not to go ahead finally. I should let her hang in there when she arrived at the rendezvous. I would send no warning. She should go and not find me there. This was the perfect exit. I could ignore her and then apologize when next we meet. This would suck, so she wouldn’t be responsive and welcoming again. We could still be friends, nonetheless. I sent her a message instead to gauge her feeling. Anytime I felt like not going ahead with the date a strong voice would rise in me and warn against that. I sent her a message, a neutral message that gave her a total freedom to make her choice.

 

“Hello. Are you good day? See you soon”! 

A fast and positive response would mean we were going out. But she could also decide otherwise, or respond late, or respond to say something unexpected came up. I was open and welcoming to that. If her reply came late then it was a perfect alibi for me. I would refuse to show up and say I thought she was busy or something and therefore I got caught up into other things. I’d then request another date, which I knew would never happen because there wasn’t enough time for the semester. I’d travel to Nigeria afterwards; she would go to Chicago. Out of sight, out of mind. On the possible scenario of no response at all I would read that as lack of interest, which I hated, but I also looked forward to. 

 

I had my bath and put everything on standby. I sat in anticipation, waiting, lounging on the sofa, phone in hand, the TV turned off in the living room. I was anxious for her reply, checking my phone every time but no reply had come in yet. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and went about my business, reading a book and scrolling social media feeds. It was almost top of the hour for the date to begin. Once I was sure it was over, too late for us to meet, I removed the DND. Just as I did that a message dropped in. It was sent fifteen minutes earlier. She sent the message to say that she was at the venue and found a table at the hallway of the second floor.

 

I donned my clothes really quick and hopped into the next bus. Not seeing her message on time, and my divided intention, affected my scheduling and timing. Coupled with bus arrival and scheduling, I was running over fifteen minutes late. Half through the journey, in the bus, an other of her message arrived. I didn’t reply. I would soon arrive in a few minutes so no need to reply. She was getting agitated. She gave me a short call, which made me pull up my phone to send her a word to calm her down. I typed and sent, “Alright, give me a minute. On my way”.  

 

Shortly afterwards I arrived at the venue. I walked upstairs. She was seated in the chair at the hallway of the second floor. The date was slated for an hour long. I came twenty-minutes late. All along, I was unsure if this was a date or something because she had already mapped out its contours and trajectory. Her demand for the date to be on “class and personal experience in the city” gave the meeting a professional touch. Part of me wanted to say no and decline outright. Even though my initial message said that meeting was about nothing serious, it actually was. “I am meeting you because I wanted to know more about you. I wanted to know more about you because I find you attractive”.  She should disregard that message. Can’t she see? 

 

I let her have her way. I could only push back for a relationship I foresaw a potential in. I shrugged and gave in to her request. Afterall, the simple act of meeting her won’t hurt, even if this meant the last and final encounter. 

 

I sat in the chair, put my phone on the table and looked at her face. I could tell a fake emotion, hers was genuine. We smiled at each other. One hour meeting lasted to one and a half hour, talking about everything, including her childhood in Ethiopia, her family, and what she wanted to do with her life in the future. She wanted to be travelling and switch jobs, maybe work in gallery and museum and crown her career with an NGO job in Ethiopia to give back to her motherland. America had triumphed over Ethiopia. There was no mention of resettlement over there. She didn’t have deep-rooted attachment in Ethiopia. 

 

Amharic and Hausa languages have some similar words with common roots in Arabic. In Nigeria folk say Habesha to mean Ethiopia. So, what is Habesha? She is Habesha. There are lots of mosques in Ethiopia, she said, did I go to Saudi Arabia? No, I replied, but was planning to go someday for the pilgrimage. “We can go together”, I proposed. She declined my offer, saying she could go with her Muslim friend, an Indian lady in Chicago. 

 

Does she like cooking? She did because from her experience America didn’t have great food compared to Ethiopia or Nigeria. And what sorts of food do they have in Ethiopia? We should try this someday at an Ethiopian restaurant in town. “Maybe someday after Ramadan because now it is Ramadan”. This suddenly caught her attention. 

 

“What religion are you”? she asked. This was our first meeting. It was not merely superficial performative question, the sort of interest on display when people were meeting people for the first time. Of course, you asked important questions if you’re thinking long-term with keen and genuine interest.  I too wanted to ask her her religion right at the start of the conversation. I would do that in a cleverly way, not frontal way that she did. I'd say “Did you go to church today”? since it was Sunday, to get to know if she was practicing Christian. Relationship outside the culture would be a serious problem to my conservative parents, but it was a problem they could tolerate. I could work with them and lobby for their acceptance. Most of my plans came to my parents as announcements, not necessarily for seeking their permission or approval. This was the established norm of respecting their authority since there was always drama in the family over generational conflicts; my parents always looking back and deferring to tradition; me always looking forward to progress and adventure. There were instances of intense wranglings. Once at the time I was going to university. The other about national service. On both occasions my parents insisted I shouldn’t be far away from home. Zaria for them was far compared to another school in Kano. It was incomprehensible for my mother when I brought the issue of going to the South for the national service. It was fierce clash on the two occasions in which parents lost on both counts. Peaceful coexistence with my parents bore me.  I looked forward to my mother’s objection to my plans. “Sha-sha-sha kawai”, she said, livid with anger and exasperation when I used James Baldwin to make a point. She gave in in the end, which contradicted the string of lies I told other girls about the unbending nature of my parents.

 

I asked the Habesha girl in return what religion she was before giving my answer. I would prefer someone coming from another faith for a relationship to be totally irreligious, an atheist for instance, so there would be no need for her walking away from her faith or the need to worry about that. She was Christian. Obviously, we could not run this on Muslim-Muslim ticket. It was a perfect reason for me not to feel hurt if things didn’t eventually take off from here. I bet the same thoughts were running on her mind. 

 

To be honest, I liked this girl so much. She was smart and brilliant. For her, though, for her alone for the first time in a long while, I felt ready to make some adjustments and personal sacrifices. I could get rid of my sense of nativity and Northern conservatism. The whole thing, however, presented cultural and religious complications. 

 

It was nice talking to her. She was sweet and wonderful. I sent her a message to thank her. Being this very nice usually meant no future. Her reply came two days later. My spirit told me she was deliberately ignoring me. You can’t forget someone and suddenly remember to send them a message in the middle of the night. Her message came in the middle of the night. To ignore someone deliberately, consciously, is to be fighting a powerful urge from within you. You’re trying so hard not to give into something even though you wanted to. True forgetting is something you do effortlessly and seamlessly. 

 

If I pushed further and harder I was hopeful a positive thing would come out of the relationship. As things stood, I was now a realistic candidate for international, inter-ethnic, inter-religious marriage. It’s my turn to make a difference, to have those little cuties that everyone admired. But again, theory ran into reality, and I realized the sacrifice was just too much. “Good things should not start from me”, I declared, like one president we know. Afterall, a friend once said, “Everyone should marry the person from their own town”. Leave the girls for the boys in their hometown. Leave the boys for the girls in their hometown. 

Madison, WI

 

 

 

The Kano Emir’s Palace, Places and Non-Places

 

I have recently been thinking through cityscape, city life and design in a beautiful combination of the art, literature, and landscape architecture. Marc Auge’s book Non-Places provides the basis for my thinking about the Kano Emir’s Palace as an anthropological place and its standing as well as other places of modernity in the city. 

It is hard to think of another place in Kano aside the Emir’s Palace that can serve as a public square and cultural center, a place where people can go and reconnect with the essence and spirit of the city in moments of pain or laughter. I understand the sentiment to think of other places like Gidan Makama and Gidan Ɗan Hausa as cultural centers, but they are different from the Emir’s Palace. Gidan Makama can be considered as the wider Emir’s Palace, it however does not meet the definition of a free public square.  

Both Gidan Makama and Gidan Ɗan Hausa are cultural centers. They serve different but related functions to the Emir’s Palace. They are symbols of tradition; they are places of cultural value; they are tourist attractions and house artifacts. One problem is they maintain elements of super-modernity. They impose restrictions for entry based on fees and ticketing and the demand for proof of innocence. Hotels, bars, cafés, restaurants, museums, and amusement parks – places of super-modernity or non-places – require proof of innocence at the entrance and leaving. They cannot therefore qualify as open spaces that embrace public life on spontaneity. It is public place vs exclusive place. On occasion, Gidan Makama and Gidan Ɗan Hausa host public events, but those events are on different character and purpose. Often, the events are organized and require entrance fees. They can’t host large, city-wide gathering with briskness and spontaneous burst of life. Emir’s Palace, for one, is where people go to commemorate and share. 

Emir's Palace, Kano 2024
Credit: High Click Media

Someone suggested that even Emir’s Palace is not completely accessible to the public except you know someone on the inside who can facilitate your access. The idea of public space is not uncommon in Kano, but the idea of cultural center as public square is not easily fathomable even though the people have been practicing this culture as a habitual pattern of life since time immemorial. Emir’s Palace is a public monument. It is a place that pre-existed any living person and would survive them. You are left in awe and respect of the place because of the history it carries. It is the tangible expression of permanence for everyone to experience.

All roads lead to the town center. Ancient cities maintain a town center. Traditionally the seat of royalty or a site of revolution or political establishment, town center provides active social life for the residents. It overlooks an open space. Around the center are other cultural buildings like the town hall, the court, the mosque and other buildings of civil and cultural authority. Raise your vision from the gate of the Emir’s Palace to the south, in the horizon you can see Municipal Council building, Gidan Makama museum and the court. On the other side to the north stands the Kano Central Mosque and Gidan Shettima. You cannot have bars, cafes and restaurants lining up the street of the Emir’s Palace. It is a cultural thing. In ancient times travelers to the city relied on the hospitality of their hosts through their duration of stay rather than on commercial services of hospitality industry and the people had their own way of hanging out with friends. 

The area of the Emir’s Palace is a swathe of giant museum of tangible and intangible heritage that harks back to memory and nostalgia. The Emir’s Palace area has administrative mood, festive and trading activities around it. Friday is a big mini event. The day has a rhythmic revelry in which residents deck out in their finest. It provides a chance to meet and greet. It is a day of warmth and spontaneity. Happy moments are commemorated on Friday, including causal visits as well as lovers’ meeting late evening at the town square. Town center is traditionally where the market square is held. Traces of that can be seen on Friday around the edges of the Kano Central Mosque.

Kano Central Mosque, 2024
Credit: High Click Media

In the morning you would see the emir’s subjects milling about the Palace, going in to pay homepage to their ruler. It is a chance for people to catch up, where exchanges between friends happen. Once it is noon people have already begun to converge for Jumma’at prayer. Children would save through the week to have money to pay for bike ride and play games at the square of the Central Mosque. Old women would proceed to visit patients, pay condolences to friends, and see their relatives. Ƙofar Fada is where itineraries intersect and mingle. 

These were the rhythms of everyday life around Gidan Sarki in the olden days. This is why Friday cannot be a fully working day in Kano. Older people prefer to pray Jumma’at prayer in the Central Mosque than anywhere else even though Jumma’at mosques sprung up almost every inch of the city. They would rather brave distance and any form of discomfort than commit the sacrilege of praying Jumma’at elsewhere. Some would stay behind and go back home only after Asr prayer.

My friend Baffa and I walked through the downtown of the ancient city as secondary schoolers, carefree and unburdened, troubled only by our equestrian zest. After school, Baffa would come pick me up from my house. From his horse stable at Ƙofar Wambai, the famous shamakin Ƙofar Wambai, we traversed the ancient city, Dukawa through Yola to Soron Ɗinki to Gwangwazo via Gidan Sarki and back, crisscrossing the alleys and backstreets. Those were our daily destinations driven by our interest in horses, checking up on friends and their horses, exchanging the latest and hottest information about equestrian activities: durbar, the new feeding techniques and adventure, the latest and most expensive horse in town and everything else. Walking around the surrounding areas gave us a chance to experience the city. 

This layout and flow of life is replicated across villages and districts. The house of the district head is overlooking an expanse, near the central mosque, the civil office or town hall, and the court. Kano city sprawls out without carrying these traditions along. Beyond the ancient city, the town becomes endless giant chaotic quarters where residential buildings, shops and businesses compete for every inch of space in a way that makes the ambiguous sense of place acute and incoherent. The middle-income neighborhoods are just there erected without the guidance of planning theory while the low-income areas are terrible eyesores. With no effort to preservation, the ancient quarters continue to suffer gentrification. Poor residents are being driven out to the outskirts into the densely populated neighborhoods.  

Madison, WI

 

The Stock of Your Life

 I

End of year gives you a chance to take stock of your life, what happens and what does not. December is always a low-energy month. It gets you into shifting allegiance between yourself and your choices.  Slow paced, you find yourself liquid with emotion, mashed into a wet inertia. I joked to my housemate that we are running the house part time. One day you wake up and ask yourself, "what do you want"? For now, stability, anonymity, and immobility. 

Life is hard, it is really hard. Always something, always something, navigating difficulties and complexities and making trade-offs between something for something. Last year, between December 2022 through to May 2023 I listened to no song at all, shut down my main WhatsApp, listened to Qur’an 24/7, in the bus, walking to and from classes, working, cooking, shopping, everything and everywhere until I travelled back to Nigeria in May. I want to go back to Nigeria and live with my family. Suddenly, I am engulfed by a serious craving for travel to West African cities or North Africa and Mediterranean cities, not to settle there but to visit different city every vacation year. 

Really, this life is crazy if you know what I mean, but this is how I wormed my way through the semester:

Open Door for refugees (ODFR), a non-profit in the City of Madison has a tradition of organizing events for the displaced who are moved to the city, including annual Thanksgiving Dinner that started pre-COVID era. The event was held this year as well. I volunteered for the organization and led a team of volunteers for meat supply. I was happy and satisfied for the job-well-done. You get a sort of experience on how to get sponsorship and manage logistics. 

The Thanksgiving Dinner is organized for the refugee families in Madison. The families were drawn from countries across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Ukraine and some other places that I cannot easily remember. I did a migration study class this fall. I read a lot about migration and displacement. By default, I must have a deep personal empathy with the immigrants and the displaced. Given the context of ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, some people refuse to participate in organizing the Thanksgiving event for its genocidal origin. 

I feel the need to extend my solidarity, symbolically to tell the refugees that they are not alone and can find community in our shared humanity. As the migrants were mainly Arabs and some handful of Blacks from the Congo, another site of genocide, I believed that my presence will be important to them. Besides, I have a shared experience with the displaced people.  Although there are differences in our circumstances, there are also similarities that bind us. I am by myself here, no family no nothing so I know what it means to live uprooted from your culture, to be the person out of place. I can tell what it means to leave century-old traditions and transplant elsewhere. Mine is voluntary, theirs is forced displacement. 

L-R: Me, Muhammad's family (M) and Egyptian couple (R)

I met new families at the event. One from Syria. The other from Egypt. I need to make things clear here. The Egyptian family is not refugee. They are immigrants. The husband is an engineer while his wife is a home maker. They have lived in the US for about twenty years, with two children, a son and a daughter, living somewhere in America with their own families. 

When I feel comfortable, I naturally like to shed my reserved demeanor and engage folks in deep, fun and meaningful conversation. A little introduction here and there, I got into talks with the Syrian family. They have a son called Muhammad. His English isn’t perfect, as he is just few months in the US. Muhammad and his family spent about 10 years in Egypt. They fled their home when the war in Syria broke. Probably when Muhammad was an infant. Muhammad grew up in Egypt, schooled there for his elementary education. When they moved here, his sister completed high school. We should call this sister Fatima. 

There is some magnetic force between me and kids, an intrigue about their psychology. I am interested in their development and always wanted to leave a positive mark in their lives. I bonded quickly with Muhammad, thanks to a shared interest in soccer and my basic Arabic language. I asked Muhammad about his friends and childhood in Syria, in English where Arabic failed. But Muhammad told me he does not have friends in Syria. He has only an imagined and mythologized memory of the place. He was infant when they fled the country. Probably, only stories of aunties and uncles. All he knew about his childhood are memories in Egypt. He played soccer with the neighborhood kids. Muhammad is at least two degrees away from his culture when his family moved to the US. This launched me into sympathy and concerns for Muhammad. Muhammad is forever different from regular kids who grow up in their original culture. I wonder if Muhammad would grow up with the same idea of the pain of migration like adult migrants. In Egypt, he was just getting to know the place when they had to move again...

Muhammad and I

Muhammad loves soccer. He loves Cristiano Ronaldo. This deepened our connection. I made assessment that Muhammad’s English is coming on gradually. As we spoke, he corrected my Arabic; I helped him with English. Muhammad told me about a special English language program in his school that kids like him were enrolled. This might be the reason for his quick English progress. I can’t shake off a sense of uneasiness about his socializing with the kids in school.

Given his background, I wanted to know what Muhammad wanted to be in his life. I spoke to him in my fledgling Arabic while the rest of crowd on the table got immersed in their own world, giving attention to us only when needed, sporadically when Muhammad wanted to confirm something from his mother for a question I asked about. Muhammad wanted to be a space driver. He said this in Arabic, which is basically an astronaut. I asked if he knew what he needed to have interest in and study since elementary school to be able to be an astronaut in the future. 

Muhammed retains much of his Arab tradition. His favorite courses are Chemiyya, Biologiyya, and Physiyya. This reminds me of the foundational contributions of Islamic intellectuals in the development of what is now called modern science.

Muhammed’s sister, Fatima, finished high school and is preparing for college. She wants to study computer. But computer is just a broad term. I pressed further for specifics, offering suggestions and insight. Fatima said she wants to study IT. Their mum and dad can’t speak English. I spoke to them in Arabic and translation assistance from Muhammed and the Egyptian family when my Arabic failed.

II

I have had an interesting session with my students. I taught two sections in Introduction to African Cultural Expressions. Basically, what we do in this class is explore broadly the research portfolios of the faculty in our department. It is always a pleasure discussing stuff about Africa with the young American students. Smug in their content with America as the center of the world, they exude a demeanor that shows they are ready to learn, but the knowledge should always come second to whatever is American equivalent.  

Section 001

Section 003

As usual, students will get to like the course for various reason and to various degrees. Some students like the course because of the instructor.  You can tell by their eagerness and investment in the course, always looking forward to the next meeting. No absence, no funny attitude or excuse. They take care of everything and make sure they do not request for any excuse. 

Walking on campus also brings back memories of my college campus days. You can see lovebirds, the serious students, the social and those with the mixture of all. You can also, actually, see the lonely students and those who don’t really give a damn! They are indifferent. They are everywhere if you look closely.

Lastly, I went to the theatre for the screening of The Color Purple, organized by The Black Cultural Excellence. I met a fine lady. A soulful woman, jet black, calm, and beautiful. We sat together. I asked her story. From the start, I sensed she wasn’t telling the truth, but I came to realize that her words, like herself, were authentic and original. You can tell when someone is telling the truth. You can tell when someone is genuinely interested in the conversation.

She is first year business major (the course I agreed, but the year I did not). Her family was originally from Ethiopia. She was born here and regularly visits the place of her ancestry. A heavy silence would ensue between mouthfuls of popcorn, only to be broken by one more question. 

Why are you not eating your popcorn?

I had already eaten it up.

How did you like your hair? 

Natural, black and original. 

Did you hope to move back to Africa someday? 

Yes, some time in the future, not to settle but to be shuttling between the continents. 

What brought you to the screening?

I have an essay in my African American class. I wanted to see how the movie could help.

Did you read the novel?

No, not really. 

On and on and on…until the end credits. Then, we stood up to go. She said, "I already have a boyfriend"! 

Madison, WI

Out of the dark night

My life is a complete irony. The last two years had been a roller-coaster of emotional pain, a mosaic of emotions. Pain and pleasure in the same body, I never expected America could be so painful. Tola said things would get better. 

For a sustained period, I lived with a constant pain in my chest, lack of sleep, excess sleep, lack of appetite, feeling of sadness and lack of interest. It was a complete mental breakdown.  I could no longer hold it. I booked an appointment with a doctor. 

The doctor asked questions about suicidal thoughts, appetite, and insomnia. As a Muslim and working class, suicide was the last thing to cross my mind, though time and again I pondered going back to Nigeria. Preliminary examination in an online chat was extended to a physical meeting. The doctor made his diagnosis. Like a malfunctioning gadget, tubes and wires were fastened to my chest. The ECG machine displayed the flashing movement of my system. Afterwards, I was booked for a two-week therapy session subject to renewal.

I was in a dark place, and it showed in my work. Keen observers – among students and professors – noticed a change in me, which affected the quality of work and teaching outputs. The final assessment from my students and the grades from my professors were unmistakable about that.  I ignited resilience and managed to get As in all my classes though! 

I experienced the worst of winter. I experienced loneliness and isolation in their darkest form. There was a time that I spent two days without speaking to human soul because there was no one to talk to. People here travel in winter break. Nobody in Nigeria called and I decided to give everyone a space until they first reached out. America has so much space without people. Abundance is a commonplace without the people to rip it off.

I was separated from my family. I was going through ordeal: emotional pain, unmet desire, cruel separation, push and pull of migration. Worse was that I knew the term for each of my feeling. I had a voice for my condition, so I knew exactly what was going on. I interrogated my decision to come to America, whether the pain is worth it. 

But what was pleasantly surprising was that I was toeing a line walked by several other immigrants before me. My experience is a private collective. As I spoke to people and read books by immigrants, I realized I was the new arrival to the league. Two years ago when I came to the US I found out I was black. Everything I experienced had been experienced by someone else. From winter blues to isolation and loneliness and going back to Africa to feel the tangible deteriorations in your living standards. It is a common knowledge among immigrants that one month in the home-country can quickly wipe out the gain of ten months. This starts the process of your naturalization, the foreign land snatching you from your homeland. You become a visitor to your native land. You need to be somewhat stupendously rich to be able to maintain in Nigeria the basic comfort you have in the US. On some days, for instance, I can live without spending a dime, which is totally impossible in Nigeria for the same amount of comfort. 

Each visit to Nigeria gives me clarity. I am trying to make America and Wisconsin home. I particularly like our city, a small, quiet university town in the Midwest. The people are warm, willing to help, and especially welcoming to immigrants. 

But I somehow feel I do not belong. The thought of winter makes me shudder. Everything comes to me differently the way I see them and relate to them in Nigeria. Here, a home is just a place to sleep. There is no deep and intimate connection between history and memory, something you can remember from childhood, an uncle or neighbor who used to sit under the tree in-front of the house. There is no chatter of the children outside. There is a total absence of elements that constitute a home, roots that run deep into eons of legends and myths. 

My perception of things back in Nigeria is different from my relationship with things here in the US. And this proves more real during a visit to Nigeria. Living in two time zones, I worry and dwell over things in Nigeria, always picturing my people, what they are doing at a particular moment, where they are sitting and what they are saying. Quite unlike how I dwell much about events in Nigeria when I am in the US, I don’t think about events and life in the US with the similar passion and intensity while in Nigeria. 

Home is no more than a place to live, in which I can move houses at a drop of a hat. My existence is a collection of papers, two pieces of luggage and a backpack. This excludes neighbors, fond childhood memories, the neighborhood kids, the majlis, the small small Islamic cultures and everything that builds one’s formative experience, which jumpstarts me into the world of instability of belonging. 

In one of our numerous discussions about the challenges of diaspora living I have at least identified two things: on one hand, there is one group of us juggling infrequent stability, those who have belonging in one place through marriage but are separated physically because of residency and distance. On the other hand are those of us suffering from acute instability of belonging. We are so rootless, with nor marriage or kids in either country. Any which way, we suffer the double bind of cultural and personal displacement. 

Such a difficult process. In our journey across geographies, every stayover or layover adds to your pleasure and trauma. Moreso if you are a Muslim. Take for instance the ritual of daily praying or fasting and the memories in it.

Our life is intimately linked to our devices. As you move across times zones, so does the change in time follow you. The time change competes and tries to override your sense of timing and ritual in your point of origin. The experience is inscribed into your memory, which then tries to destroy or bastardize your sense of stability.

Instability of belonging means you are in a continuous state of transition, never able to put down roots, even if it means you are travelling back somewhere in an unspecified distant future. In the end, majority of people I spoke with have a plan of going back to where they come from. Wherever you move, you are starting all over again. For your intermittent or infrequent visits, the latent awareness of “going” sits in your subconscious. Arriving and going requires logistics and preparing. I have to buy new stuff to start over my life anytime I visit Nigeria, which I then have to get rid of when travelling back to the US. This continuous state of change and transition entails incredible amount of flexibility and minimalism. 

My life is screwed up, but this is my choice. And like Tola said things will get better. Things get better with each visit to Nigeria. I went to Nigeria and cut off the wires that caused the sparks. Sadly, in all of this, people think I am enjoying. Everyone thinks I am printing money in the US! 

Far from home

It's winter. Everywhere is white. We are copped up into our den. Those who could travel did travel. My plan to go to Texas fell through. 

In the past months I signed up for International Friendship Connection program, Getaway 2023. The event happens every year at Twin Lakes, Manson, Iowa. Iowa is a neighboring state, five hours from Wisconsin. As someone who loves travelling, this seemed an interesting idea. 

I needed to explore new places in America. I did not travel during my Fulbright year. For many reasons. One, I instinctively knew that I would be back in the US after the Fulbright year. That says that I would have more chance to explore when I’m back. Secondly, I was trying to save money for the expenses into graduate school. The end of my Fulbright year meant the end of my time on the US government payroll and privileges. Everything fell on my shoulders. Unlike before, I had to pay for my ticket now while flying back to the US from Nigeria. I had to pay for visa and other documents processing fees needed for graduate school.  It was only sensible to save the money for these upcoming expenses.

Arrangement was made for the Getaway event. Five schools from the Midwest were to be in attendance: UW-Madison, Iowa State, University of Missouri, KC; University of Nebraska, and the University of Minnesota. 

Dinner in the dining hall

I had no idea what the event would have looked like, but it seemed exciting to be away from home. It was even more exciting that one would be traveling to rural America, away from the modern comforts to live for some days in a cabin. Americans were excited to be away from their modern comforts. As it turned out, however, the only difference from your home was that you are away from home. There was the internet, though not fast, and almost all the amenities that run in an American home. 

I was assigned to a car belonging to the Walkers. Dillion and Kaitlyn Walkers are a beautiful couple. We became friends in the fall of 2022 shortly after my return from Nigeria. Our car had four passengers. Two Americans, one Russian and myself a Nigerian. The Walkers came and picked me up. We drove to the Russian and picked him up. The Russian, Mr Nurlan, is a funny guy with a critical mind. He is carefree and casual, a non-stickler to any American political correctness. Nurlan asks a lot of questions, is critical of faith and is blunt with American social issues. 

For many days my Gambian friend Majula had been excited about my adventure. She had been excited because she wanted to see how things should pan out. She kept egging me on to pack early. I assured her no worries. I travel light. 

Friday afternoon, I ate my lunch and packed my bag with a pillow, sheet, and blanket as the instructions for the trip warned us. These are unavailable in the cabin. I sat in the living room waiting for our pool car's arrival. Everything happened within seconds. 

Majula found all of me funny. She asked teasing questions and made funny remarks. What was so amusing to her about me was that I didn’t look like someone soon to be traveling. She was excited because I was leaving my comfort zone. It’s brave of me to have left Nigeria and come to America. Blind to this fact, she didn’t consider me naturally adventurous. Moreso, in her vision, I am not adventurous with food, to which I agreed. At every dinner Majula would present a dessert. She is stricter with American food culture and has installed this in the house. I declined her dessert offer, saying I am not interested in all these accessories of life.  

The Walkers had arrived. We were supposed to eat our dinner on our way. The ETA to the camp was around 10PM. We broke the journey at Dubuque. I asked if we could get Asian or Mexican restaurant. It was my hope that I could get something that aligned with my palate. We got into a Mexican restaurant. We ate rice, relaxed a little and continued with the journey.

After a three-hour drive, we arrived at the Twin Lakes Bible Camp. We parked our car, checked in and went to our room. If the Getaway event was lined up with activities, like what you experience at NYSC camp, our room brought back those memories in a torrent rush. The room was lined with bunk beds.  The camp, like the NYSC, is far from home, brings together strangers from college campuses, set of games to enjoy, new friends to make and build connections. Upon arrival and signing up, we dropped our luggage and went back to the main building to play one of the games on the schedule for the night. Just like NYSC experience, the camp was quiet at midnight. 

Bunk beds, each room hosted eight people

The camp was up at 6AM. We took turn using the bathroom. I stayed behind and prayed. I then followed the rest to the Bible Study, after which breakfast was served at 8AM. Every step of the program reminded me of the NYSC. I was smiling. But my friends couldn’t relate. I told them briefly what NYSC is. It's like AmeriCorps.

Lots of winter games after breakfast. We played Toboggan on the nearby frozen lake. Others played ice-skating, but it was extremely cold outside. So, I remained indoors.

During the day, I stole my way back to the room and prayed for the day’s prayers. Once, Nurlan was with me in the room. I asked Nurlan if he had ever seen Muslims’ prayers. He has seen that countless times. in fact, his father was a Muslim. He used to pray with a small carpet. 

I sneaked some apples into my bag with the hope to eat them if I couldn’t eat the food provided at the camp. Luckily, I could eat fruit and potatoes and tea or coffee at the dining table for breakfast. For the lunch, there were chicken and rice and fruit and vegetables. Obviously, the organizers thought about the diverse community of faith and cultural background. I survived intermittingly on crunches and drinks to supplement my diet.

The Madison team

Saturday was a day full of fun. We played soccer, climbed rock, and I watched others play basketball. One of the best moments for me was the karaoke night. I met Venessa Porto, a young lady from Ecuador at the University of Nebraska. I liked her song. 

I met other Africans. One from Adamawa, a Nigerian- American born to a Yoruba woman and Bachama father. Africans from Gabon, Ghana, Congo and Rwanda. The first time I met anybody from Rwanda. 

Sunday morning. We were back at the Bible Study. We sang, we listened to stories and off we went to breakfast. The Getaway event was wrapping up. We had our family group discussion. We packed at 11Am. off we drove back to Wisconsin, another five-hour journey.

Madison, WI

My wife: mother of the future US astronauts

“I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costumed party; and I attended with my bare face” - Frank Kafka 

It’s hard to pin me down. It’s hard to understand me. But if you have even a remote awareness of a concept called “minimalism” you will begin to make sense of my life. I have just had a conversation with one of the girls that blink on my radar.  What I found was amusing!

It appears I am living way below the societal expectations, and in some ways, if you know me, you can almost be sure I don’t give a fuck about how the world sees me. I am chaos unto myself, but I have some little personal principles that guide my life. One of them is that I live a minimalist lifestyle. And if you know me you can tell I live a very simple lifestyle. I’m cheap to maintain. I really don’t cost much because I have known how hard it is to earn. A few days after we started living with my roommate, my roommate remarked that my life is simple. I opted for fasting and daily home workouts. I opted for fruits and an organic lifestyle. When my roommate presents drinks at dining, I hardly take them. He knew I dismissively called them accessories and that I do away with unnecessary accessories.

The simple things I buy are simple but not cheap. They’re of top quality, especially things to do with the internal system – the food, water, pharmaceuticals and where to sleep.  And I worried a lot about the quality of the air I breathe. Now that I am not in Nigeria, about the air that people back home breathe. These small but important things are what defined the good and qualified life. They’re what set you apart from reduced humanity and social death, even physical death from accumulated harmful effects. I have expensive tastes for things that nurture internal human soul. But who cares about theories! 

I live a very authentic life. I present to you my authentic self, especially in my WhatsApp circle. To be sure, what you read on my WhatsApp are mostly my true thoughts. They can be hidden in jokes but they are my true feelings. They’re from the bottom of my heart. One more thing to be sure about is that you hardly get a hundred percent truth from my mouth. Once, a senior friend said I should not be called “Saddiq,” a sobriquet of my name that means “the honest one”. While I was not entirely dishonest, he said, I was not also straightforward. My lies are not harmful lies and the truth they hide would not benefit anyone. “You’re a kind of ambiguous character”, he said, which makes it hard to tell when I am lying vs when I am telling the truth. I occupy this liminal space between banter, joke, logic and reason; between religiosity and secularism; seriousness and unseriousness. Even my mother struggles with this fact, including all the women I have been in relationships with. I’m fluid that defy pinning down and categorization. “Keep being fluid and unpinnable until you lose your quest”, one of the girls said.

But no one captures the descriptive energy of my personality so eloquently as my girlfriend. “I know your type”, she said years ago, “you’re honest, but you also like to pretend to tell lies”. Once, another girlfriend in Kaduna said I played too much. Another one, still on my radar, said “I know your shenanigans”. Not once, friends and potential in-laws said I played too much. This is because I am moving in ways understood only to myself.

So, this girl on my radar called and said I was not dressing well. Her remark bordered on admonition and disdain but was more of a suggestion because she offered to help me with my dressing problem. She acknowledged I was low-key, I was self-aware; she added in the same breath, “as in you’re in the US and you’re not buying designers”.  

“But my library is well-stocked”, I said. If she meant I was stingy, I spend fortunes on books, books that I can borrow from the library. But I still buy them to build my library for a planned book donation initiative to Nigerian university libraries in my retirement, including in my Alma Mata where I stole books from the shelf to save them from decay. Besides, I still have shoes and caps and shirts that I bought last year which I never used. So, why waste money on things that I should not use for the whole year? In addition, here in the US, you don’t want to impress anyone. She said it’s not to impress anyone, just to feel good about yourself. I agreed. I told her if this was what she meant then I hardly bought shadda for my clothing even when I was in Nigeria. I opted for “yards”, and tissue white yards for that matter except for the dirty nature of the environment that forced me to abandon the practice. To feel good, I dress light and use perfume with celestial scent. I am also very active in the process of my tailoring, to make sure the thread used on buttons and drawstring are of the same color. For each set of outfits, I spend a deal of time on the internet trying to work out great aesthetics. My tailor complains bitterly about my narcissism. Girl erupted into laughter and said I still don’t understand. 

I was not telling her these things. These were the thoughts running in my mind and I thought she was within the intellectual range. I have a natural disgust for vulgarity and lacking in social graces and taste. 

I noticed a remarkable difference when I visited Nigeria last summer. People dress ostentatiously. The American foolishness started getting into my head, obviously, for I was dressing casually, appearing in jeans and a t-shirt for some outings. 

Obviously, this girl sat down and had a conversation with herself about her future in my life. And she realized, as per her standard and taste, I needed to upgrade. But here in the US, like I always believe, the standard is in your bank accounts and zip code. You would be shocked to see how rich people like to appear! I have rich families from Nigeria as well, rich even by the US standard, whom I know how they live!  

The 7th child of a director in a federal agency, I honestly believe there are people like her who dress ostentatiously without the will to impress. What was amusing was the lack of knowledge of the alternative dressing code, that there are people who can afford to but chose for a minimalist lifestyle. The girl, for the life of her, cannot goddam make sense of what minimalism is.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the mother of the future US astronauts!

Madison, WI

PS

What you read here is but fiction from the figment of my imagination. Take it seriously at your own peril!