Gbadura Fun Mi.
I woke up this Sunday morning at exactly 4:04am after an elaborate dream of me performing Darey’s ‘Pray for me’ on stage. Before this time, I’d seen some of the most precious memories in my short life play out before I climbed up this stage. I was in Primary 1 again with my friend Salami who drowned in a drum at age 6, and suddenly I was in university again, but this time everyone was much older. It was the June 12 parliamentary building of the University of Benin, and as I stepped up the platform on the corridor, the surroundings became pitch black with only the stage lit, and there was suddenly a drummer who played the hand drums and one male bass backup singer… I was naked on stage with saggy blue briefs and I tried to support it with one of my hands, other times I just sang passionately with the backup singer staring me straight in the eyes as he articulated the words to the song and spurring me on in this deep emotional experience.
And then I woke up, but this dream is not strange to me, I knew what it meant from the moment I woke up, so i’ll tell you.
Let me take you back to university for a bit, I hated it there, I would count days on my notepad, I wrote besides the course codes “And it came to pass”. Nothing I was doing to make my grades better was working. My results were always a rude shock to me, it was either good or bad and didn’t depend on your hard work, I saw my grades plummet in the last 3 years, I would study my eyes out but that too wasn’t working, I started falling sick way more often, everything horrified me about school, I was losing it quick, I remember my mom calling me one day before an exam and I was crying on the phone, and she said like she would on days like these… “Don’t let the devil see your tears, read what you can remember, get in there and do your best, if you can’t, walk out of the hall, you give it another shot next year”. So, 3 hours later after doing my revisions, I got into the hall, the questions just came like a white light and just like that, all the answers I crammed were gone. 7 questions and not one clue. I just walked out of there, eyes forward.
I went for my Industrial Training at Guinness Nigeria and It was probably one of the safest places in the world I could be around, the men at the brewery protected me like their child, taught me a tonne of life lessons, I still remember every one of them, and every time I talk about my experience at the brewery, I remember a friend of mine say “your eyes light up”, well what do you expect from someone who’s had a streak of bad things happen to them? we celebrate the ones that made us smile. I still hope they gather at the bar at 17:59, I hope the brewery still has steam of cooking mash going up into the air, maybe I’d love to meet the new Condition Monitoring and Engineering Intern.
My first salary was NGN 9810, this was what was left after they removed taxes, looking back at this brings smiles.I remember walking around the brewery in aching shoes to get readings across over 75 metres in the brewery before 8:30am so my engineering manager can have the report before 9am, about safe spaces, Guinness was home. I made one of my best friends there, he took me as a brother, he still is my big brother! Life happens fast, Ayodeji my friend is married and has a kid and has moved to Canada.
When my final year results came, I remember standing in front of my course adviser, who doesn’t advise anybody, just amplifies the wretchedness of that institution. I remember telling him ‘But how did I get 5 E’s out of my 7 final courses, especially knowing that I read my eyes out for this, and this semester constitutes 45% of my entire study here”. He brought out all my results and they were 40 on the dot, and he said; “Do you want us to do a re-mark and you spend an extra year in school, and God help you if you score downwards and you have to rewrite the exams.” I looked at him and walked out of there with my head down and actual tears.
When I graduated university, I didn’t go for my convocation, it was a dark part of my life, I didn’t want it, I didn’t get a picture in a gown, I just took my statement of results, shoved it in my bag and moved on, this chapter closed and may the darkness in it never seep out. So in that same year, we got in for NYSC and they posted me to Katsina state, my mother was alarmed “If you just trek small, you don enter Niger nau” she wasn’t having it, so I waited at home another 3 months for redeployment, When it came, it was Bornu in the middle of Boko Haram’s murderous insurgence, I insisted on going, thankfully camp was in Nassarawa, I redeployed to Enugu, I wanted a cultural immersion and that I got. You need to be in Enugu for May 30 Biafra Independence day celebrations, it’s inebriating.
I first listened to Darey’s song in July of 2015. I was still serving the country on NYSC in the red earth mountains and coal city; Enugu. I saved the little money I was earning, that when NYSC was done, I’d saved about half of my income at the time, with 100k to live on and some design projects I’d done. But all of it flashes through my eyes momentarily as I write this. I remember organising design sessions in church, managing social media for House on the Rock, Enugu, I remember Uncle Akwaowo Willie, he showed me the ropes of managing media for a church, I still thank him for the opportunity.
In this same year, I can’t forget being assaulted by a catholic priest in the corper’s lodge where I stayed for the first quarter of NYSC, I remember meeting my landlord who cut my rent by 80% because I had painted the room so nicely. He always liked me like the son he never had, he would send me dinner, kindhearted that man! Sharing a beer with him on some evenings was beautiful, and the one time we celebrated the new yam festival in his compound, the yam porridge and fish was everything.
I remember my mom travelling to see me during NYSC, only my mother would have done that, so imagine my surprise when my mother calls me ‘Chiedozie, Anom na peace park’. I brought her home, she met my landlord, saw where I was living, we went to have a conversation with the catholic priest who’d assaulted me months earlier… I remember my dad not believing that I didn’t do something to deserve what he did, he’s always had that bias that priests can do no wrong, we have a lot of priests in the family… so proximity bias maybe, lol! This is probably the only time this story takes a laughing turn, so take that one in.
I remember how she spoke to the catholic priest, just asking him “You threw my son into the streets homeless because in your words he disrespected you, do you know he has no relatives here? what if something had happened to him, would you get me another first son?” It was nice to see someone stand up for me, but that was soon to end. My mom has had a long streak of standing up for me, but as with all good things, they come to an end, I’d love to dwell on my mother the matriarch and the myriads of ways she displayed strength at every turn of our lives… that’s a crazy long story, like this one isn’t long enough.
I remember returning home from NYSC with my big box, it was almost 9pm, my mom was there at the park with her Mercedes Benz to pick me up. We talked for most of the night. People always called me her husband, but there was no shortage of words with that beautiful heart.
That Christmas, I told my mom I was going off to Lagos in January. She asked me to stay, that she could get me a job in the state civil service and it would be a decent pay just so she could have me close, but I definitely wasn’t having it. That December, my mentor had asked me to come to Lagos and work, I had written a 12 part story series for Quickteller on some of your big blogs, maybe if I point some of them out, you probably read them! I couldn’t bring myself to asking him for money even though he insisted, I told him he’d taught me so much and that was my gift to him.
Don’t be a fool,
Cos life in the city is Unbelievable
You can get broken oh!!
You’re just a little boy
And you may never find your way.
These were my mom’s words in essence, and I guess I’d always be her little boy, she begged and begged and gave me reasons to stay in Benin. She cooked me the last meal she ever did, it was noodles… she made it with onions, it was humbling to see her take out the onions herself and apologise to me, hard to reconcile because I have a scar on my arm for her flogging me because I take out onions from food. She dropped me at the park, she hugged me, I gave her my Google Cardboard, and she drove off, I knew I had chosen and we both had to live with whatever comes now. It was the last time I saw my mother whole.
I remember the ride, I sat in the middle of the second to the last seat, I took out my bible, I wrote my votive again, it was something I’d done every year to remind myself of who and whose I am. I had my last 150k from freelance projects and savings from NYSC, and Darey’s pray for me blasted on my earphones. I got to Lagos by 4pm, and the bus dropped me with my big black bag, my childhood friend came to pick me up and had to make me promise to tell his other housemates that I was only staying a few weeks. Well, I ended up staying for 3 years.
With no job, I’d borrowed him 100k because he desperately needed it, I soon had to start to live on N300 rice that I had to buy at the street side at about 3–4pm, so I ate nothing else that day. I could easily have called my mom for more money, but I’d just give her more points in her argument for me coming back home.
I remember I’d just sign up for events on eventbrite, so I could go out and meet with people, maybe something will click. Lagos was overwhelming in the first days, I got my first gig to write a web series for a popular online TV, you probably know which one, after writing 13 episodes and sleeping on the floor of this guy’s office for 3 days, directed the series and got paid 1k to take uber back home, the money never came and so I let it go. So one day, I end up at elevation church with the extreme air conditioning, met Lara from FCMB, she drove a red Venza and dropped me at home after church, we kept in touch for the longest time. Nothing was working until my mentor finally called me up to come work for him, I did.
I remember that day, I had N200 left, borrowed my housemate’s clothes, the blue striped shirts with the white collar and the grey pants, I had no formal clothes, worse I didn’t have the money to buy some. I got on a 100 Naira bus to Lekki Gate, but had to trek down for the interview, and trek back out, so I could have the other 100 Naira to go back home. I had to stand outside to dry off before going in because I was sweaty from all that walk. I remember the interview, and how old 20 Naira notes fell out of my pocket and they asked me to pick it up. Yes, I got the job.
So, in the middle of waking up by 5, sharing a bathroom with 4 people, having to use the convenience at the office to avoid using the one at home, bathing with hard water that didn’t foam in Jakande, my mom called me one morning in March of 2016 and said the doctors found stones in her gallbladder. I immediately started crying on the phone, and it was not the first time she had told me ‘stop crying’ in my short life, she’d always say ‘don’t let the devil see your tears, don’t let him know he is winning, besides, if you are crying, what should I now do’.
I remember I would close from work and go straight to the prayer chapel at House on the Rock just to pray for her. I remember my friend Temitope would join me there, and a few months later, they’d diagnosed gallbladder cancer. I remember all the nights I had to travel to see her all the way in Asaba, and I’d just watch the roads run beside us until it got really dark.
I remember the first day I went to the hospital, and my sister said I should go upstairs, that she was there, I got there and I looked at every bed and I didn’t see my mom, I went back down, and then my sister pointed my mom to me, she’d lost so much weight, her cheek bones protruded, and when she woke up, we talked as we always did, I prayed for her and sang her her favorite Frank Edwards song every day and every night. Other patients came and left, but every time I travelled back to see her, she had new roommates, she became the constant in the room. She would hold my hand and say “Chiedozie stay, I will pay you what you earn at your job”
I remember one day she asked me to come lie on the bed so she could lie on me because of the bed sores. Life hits you man and there’s no shortage of horror that life brings to you and says “how do you play?”, she now had to pee through a catheter, she was deteriorating fast, even after surgery… this is not to mention the madness we had to watch as she went through chemotherapy.
It’s a very horrible thing to watch your mother die, and so slowly at that, it’s like bleeding to death in little drops. She got better, went home and passed on at home, I sent her her last birthday cake, she promised me that when I came again, she’d cook for me again, I looked forward to it, it was great to know she could talk now.
My brother said she could walk now with some support, I was happy, I thought to spend some time at the office so that I could at least pay for the time I spent at the hospital with her even though some of it was without pay. But this was my first job, the little I could do was be diligent at it. Even on some nights at the hospital, I’d do some work, I remember I was on the Etisalat Prize for Literature and Prize for Innovation Projects to write the website content, and I did complete that project while sitting next to my mom and sending emails from Asaba.
So one afternoon, my sister calls saying that mommy said she wants to see me, but mornings before that I remember her sending me an SMS to say ‘Having you was one of the best things that happened to me, You will always be a blessing to me Chiedozie.” I remember going home early from work and just sleeping off, part of me knew she was gone, my mother would speak to me directly. So I went home with my friend Darlington, I never really understood why my friend would volunteer to travel with me and shine his gap tooth occasionally, something in me knew something was off, I cleaned the house that saturday morning before leaving, my housemates asked me to just leave it and travel, I insisted, because I was at the least going to pull in my weight in the little way I could.
Fast forward, I am in Benin at almost 9pm, there’s lots of people at home, I asked “Kezi Nnem?” and my sister said “She is sleeping” and I said “she will wake up”. But then I looked at Emmanuel my brother and he never was this swallowed into himself in this way, there’s always some exuberant energy about him. He was sitting at the dining table, he never sat on that spot. Then the many talks by relatives started, and then I thought… “Why would relatives be here, they are hardly ever here”… A string of oddities added it for me, because what the hell was my mom’s pastor doing at my house by 9pm?” A few hours later, and I am watching my lifeless mother on the white tiled mortuary table. This was the same hospital she had brought me once when I had cerebral malaria that hit me every year in university and I ordered the same thing we ate the last time, and ate it alone. Life guts you to your very core man, I stayed at the mortuary for two days until my father came to pick me up from there.
Sometimes I sleep on bare tiles just to see what that feels like. I remember sitting with my father as he cried and shared memories of her from when they were younger, and life together, He also shared the fair bit of evil he’s had to deal with, maybe he would write that story, maybe Emmanuel my brother can write his, maybe Daniella my kid sister would, maybe Yemisi my girlfriend too? Maybe Margaret, my sister who deferred her education for 2 more years to take care of my mom. Or maybe the millions of young people who move on with life everyday, giving each day a fresh chance at building possibilities for themselves, life is breaking them hard to the very last bone, they may never find their way, but life is worth giving it a chance, so we do it with our back straight, wipe the tears and go for it with a smile, knowing it may not smile back, but what’s better? not giving it a shot? definitely not. People hit runs of bad luck and things take you out of life. There’s no shortage of horror that can wipe you out even if you are doing your best. But there’s no better plan than to do your best at every turn possible.
I know i could get lost
I know i could get broken
Forgive me father
But i got to take a chance
I’m already gone so just
Pray for me
We buried her, I guess sand does a good job at covering pain after all, same with a white wooden box. I moved back to Lagos, plunged myself back into work, you know it’s the little things like filling ‘deceased’ on forms when they ask for your maternal details, those can be an insane trigger, or the fact that I have carried her voter’s card and passport with me for the past 3 years? Life doesn’t say “Hey, take a break, that one was hard, let’s go again in a few months” No, it goes in hard again!
I ghost wrote a book for someone, who paid a quarter of the fees, and paid in 3 instalments with over a year, and there’s still a 10k balance. I took that L with my chest and moved on. I had to teach kids in the evenings to supplement my pay, I had no weekends, I was teaching 3 kids at once, sometimes 4 times a week, I remember yawning once in the middle of a class once, and the parents laughed hard, this was my reality. Some families were just horrible, I remember one where the woman called me to insult me for peeing in her visitor’s toilet, nothing guts you more man, at home in Benin, I have a full 8 flats building in my name, so to have someone violate me like that was crazy, but to apologise like it was nothing guts you crazy, I didn’t quit, I just apologised, it was half the pay from my day job, I was going to hang on even though with my fingertips, I remember she finally fired me for attending a job interview in the same time for her kid’s lectures, even though I had told her days before, I didn’t get the job, and this job was lost… well, you dust yourself and move again.
I had to go long distances to teach on other weekends, the breeze from the speeding danfo can be everything on terrible days. I met a kind family afterwards, they were everything and took me in like their own child, it was one of the sanest moments of my life, I was no longer teaching for the money, it had become a safe space for me.
I finally hit a dark depressive episode, I quit my job, couldn’t move for days, my girlfriend paid for therapy, I travelled to see her, stayed with her for a month or more and slowly began to piece my life together again, started getting confident in doing things again, started picking it up one at a time. It is beautiful to have a woman so beautiful at heart, It’s such a gift God has given me. When I got back, the parents of the kid wrote me a small note, I still have it in my wallet, it read “There’s more to you than the things that want to kill you.”
I volunteered to teach mathematics at a community primary school, it wasn’t everything, but it was good to see small humans who were just giving life a shot, I could learn from the positively intoxicating energy they had, I thought I could do that three times a week, and they came to love me.
I remember getting this job in Abuja that I’ve worked for over a year now, one that I’d soon share the astronomic successes that I’ve recorded. I gathered my friends in Lagos and told them I was leaving, we laughed, ate and thank you Ore for that perfume, I wore it for the longest time, I still have the empty bottle. I remember sitting with Bolu to talk about moving, I took the night plane the next day, my friend dropped me at the airport, I gave him my special spoons and left my hand crafted walking stick with him, I remember the windy Abuja skies that kept the plane in the air for an extra 30 minutes.
It was a new life for me, met new people in my life who in fact changed me in beautiful ways, and this morning as I write this, I remember it’s exactly a year since I was robbed by young boys with cutlasses who broke into our home. Last night, my housemate said “happy anniversary” and I knew it had to be exactly a year since it happened, it’s crazy because the night before, I had fallen off a bike and dislocated my hip and arm, I remember standing up and feeling so bitterly angry at life, not at the bikeman, I got home, dumped the mud stained clothes in the dust bin, had a shower, took meds and slept.
In a few weeks, I will be marrying my best friend of 4 years, and we have had no shortage of not so pleasant memories together, but that’s what courage is. She has been a courageously beautiful soul and I am more than happy to slug it out at life with this beautiful human by my side.
I think we are built to confront catastrophe voluntarily and I’ve seen her do that with me everyday, I mean, she has had a fair share of the brutal reality of life, and I’ve seen her bring her best to it. You know, going head on at life doesn’t mean you won’t get killed, it’s catastrophe nonetheless. None of this is mindless optimism, the fact that you decide to act in a heroic manner doesn’t mean you won’t get killed. But you don’t have a better bet than that than to confront what it is that is threatening you fortrightly. In that there is some possibility that you will discover how to deal with it.
Do it with your eyes open, it could be a faulty solution and we are both opening ourselves up to further betrayal. The upside is, it works. It’s very common that the way you get the best out of someone even if they have made many mistakes is to trust them with your eyes open and courageously too. It’s not because you are naive or foolish, but because you have chosen to dispense with cynicism and you’d lay yourself open to the possibility of betrayal because that’s the best way of putting your broken world together.
There will be things that come along, knock you down and flatten you so hard, you won’t believe it. To trust is an act of courage, You can’t trust people because they are trustworthy. If you trust them, they might become trustworthy, that’s a different thing. Gratitude is the same thing.
With the amount of things we’ve both had to live through, we have come to know that bitter is a bad road, it takes you to a bad place, whatever you are bitter about, you can bloody well be sure that you will be much more bitter about the consequences of you being bitter. It’s not a game that’s an improvement. You have your reasons, you were hurt terribly, unforgivably, so you are bitter, withdraw from people, seek revenge as a consequence, well go ahead, you end up in the same place that you were when everything that hurt you happened, except worse. So replace bitterness with gratitude because you are courageous and brave not naive and foolish. Life can be brutal, but there are many things to be grateful about.
What does it mean to be a good person, it means that you can courageously confront the unknown and change it, you can make it better. You can confront the terrible part of nature and you can make it less horrible than it needs to be. you can confront the devil that lives in your heart and learn to properly prevail. The world is mortally dangerous, and we are subsumed by our ignorance but with courage and truth, we can confront it and make it better on all levels.
There’s going to be terrible darkness in your life and it would make you cynical and bitter. If you looked at it hard enough and you didn’t shy away and you brought everything you had to bear on it, you’d find that there is more to you than there is to the horror. To transform your life to something that’s more like heaven and less like hell. And that’s your job all the time, and how you do it actually matters.
I paid for the rent for our new home recently, and it’s excitingly adventurous building a life with someone you love. I don’t expect it to be smooth sailing, but one thing that wouldn’t change no matter what comes is me giving it my best shot. So this is why I say “abum onye Ijele” I am a man that has been on many journeys at different points in my life… So, Gbadura Fun Mi, Pray for Me.
