1
Japa is to slough off the skin
To learn to swim upstream
Mouth open and panting like fish
Because every new place is like dry land
And you, hapless fish must fight
To become a land animal
Where water was once home
2
New to the British isles
I stand on one leg
My senses are sponges
Soaking up everything I see
I am the ghost of Hamlet’s father
Doomed for a season to walk this isle
3
London is dirty and London smells
London is dirty and smells of piss
And the effing cost of living crisis
London is dirty and London smells
4
On my evening walk in Lewisham
I pass two young black boys
Faces furrowed with frowns
Looking for someone to stab them
My wife says ika buruku
Yoruba for “you are evil”
But I am not evil
I am just a truth-teller
5
Riding shot-gun in Peckham Rye
A police stop and search
Reminds me of that night
Many moons ago in Lagos
When a careless finger enraged the trigger
And a bullet ended a teenager’s dream
But here in Peckham Rye all I think of
Is Chris Kaba unarmed and dead
And the Met Police spouting platitudes
6
To Japa is to be humped back
To become the fabled ijapa
Who journeys every where bearing his home on his back
We Nigerians who have Japa’d
Have all become hunch backs
Bearing the memories of the places
We left behind on our bent backs
Stalking LinkedIn for whitewashed jobs
And wondering whether these Indians spouting bad English
In corner shops ever heard of TOEFL?
Excerpted from an ongoing project, Japajantis: An immigrant’s journey.
