How I Found Independence, Lost It and Gained Freedom Instead.
On Saturday mornings, I play Asa songs from my Spotify playlist while I sing, make pancakes and slice peppers in it. The pancakes remind me of my secondary school days in Nigeria.
Girls in red checkered shirts tucked into blue skirts. Boys in ties, red checkered shirts tucked in blue trousers. Every morning, we stand in a line under a bright sun and say a prayer in English and another in Hausa. Then we move into the classrooms and get about our day and it all feels very routine as school often is. After school, my friends and I hang out and we meet the lady at the back of the school who sells pancakes and fried yams.
Back to the present moment, in the afternoon, I put yam in a pot of water and then mix it with red palm oil and tomato sauce. Then, I add salt, seasoning and fish and in about two hours, the porridge is ready. The kitchen feels hot from cooking and I’m sweating. Then I take my plate into the living room, switch on the fan and then place my food on top of the round marble table as I eat my porridge.
At the time, I felt proud of myself for having my own apartment. I would go to work, come back and have my own little home.
I was in a spacious one-bedroom apartment that was paid for with the money made from my job. In my first apartment, I had a kitchen, a bedroom, and a living room. The living room had a wallpaper that was white and blue and had square tiles with trees over it.
For the apartment, I purchased different items like a mini-fridge, a blender and a small electric cooking stove. I also bought three pots, a frying pan, plates, and cups. Next, I purchased a brown marble table and chair for the living room and two standing fans. Also, I got a painting I bought at the Abuja Arts and Crafts market, a store located in Jabi.
When you walk into the crafts market, you see different stalls with huts thatched with grass and leaves. The traders sell different items, from African paintings to handmade bags and baskets. There’s also jewelry or wooden African artifacts of African men, women and animals to decorate a house with.
I purchased a painting by a man from Edo State who sits under a wide leafy tree. As he carves, he tells me he is into making sculptures and paintings. The artwork I purchased is a painting of two homes in what is reminiscent of a poor village setting. There are trees by the side and at the back of the homes are a flock of birds flying around.
For food items for my apartment, I would go shopping at the grocery store and the local market and as I did, money went by quickly on groceries and transportation to work and back home. I could spend up to N20,000 a week on transportation and then up to N12,000 a week on groceries. As my money was quickly depleting, it became very obvious to me that I had made many bad decisions.
One was spending too much on an apartment I wasn’t ready to maintain. The next was leaving the job I had which enabled me to get the money for the apartment. Then I left the new job I had and so I was unemployed but independent?
But independence doesn’t work too well when you don’t have enough money. So I was soon packing my bags and selling the little things I had acquired to move back in with my parents.
As I packed my suitcase and moved back to my parent’s house, I was reminded of my college graduation.
In Kissena Boulevard of Queens, New York, I tossed my graduation cap in the air, dreaming about independence and freedom. After getting my degree, I saw myself having an artsy apartment in Brooklyn. I saw myself working in Manhattan and having fun adventures in New York City, going to theatre shows, poetry readings and concerts. Then I’d come back home to my cozy apartment. That was the dream.
But the reality is that after I graduated, I had a part-time job for about six months and then left. Then, the following year, I was flying away from New York and on my way back to my home in Nigeria.
Initially, I felt like a failure because right after college, I thought I’d be stepping into adulthood and figuring out independence.
But before I knew it, I was in my childhood house, and for a little while, I lamented over it but in spite of it all, I was feeling a certain sense of peace and freedom at home. In a diary entry, I wrote…
I’ve recently reunited with friends from secondary school so that’s nice. Things have been okay.
Life in Nigeria is not easy. There’s the light instability. There’s the loss of independence with living with my parents. There’s the climate of violence I read about on the news.
When I think about these things, I’m left with a sense of longing. But in spite of it all, I admit there is a certain sense of peace and contentment I have here that I’ve not felt in a long time. That’s a good feeling.
I was losing my independence but I was still okay because I was gaining a form of peace and comfort I had missed. I missed the comfort of home and being around family. It was the trade-off from my independence and it was okay because I needed freedom of peace of mind.
