**Japa – phototaxis: the movement from your comfort zone to an unknown land in search of freedom from a country that eats its young.
The year after the shoot-out cut short the lives of innocent protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos marked the period of mass exodus of many Nigerian citizens. That same year, my cousin was kidnapped; I didn’t wait to be the next victim stuffed in the back of a car like a sack of potatoes; I left. I packed my two suitcases with my dreams, jackets, and thermal wear and was embraced by the cold Canadian wind that rushed into my nostrils and out, chilling my lungs and pushing blood out of my nose.
I was one of those who lined up, waiting to board the plane, taking with me the familiar smell of my mother’s wrapper, the ogiri that hung from the basket in the kitchen, and the prayers of my father. My mother’s prayers rode on her rosary beads as she picked each bead with care and muttered supplications to God to carry me safely over the ocean and bring me back in one piece.
“Canada will grant you your heart desires. You will not come back like Ejiro”
Ejiro was a distant cousin who came back after many years in America with a nylon bag and a basket of woeful tales that America was not a bed of roses.
“A lot of people have tried to achieve this dream by land, and sea, use it wisely” she added.
She was making references to the millions of people who sought freedom through the desert, becoming prey to poisonous desert snakes and drinking urine for water. I thought of how many bodies have washed ashore trying to seek this freedom, men who sailed the seas with the weight of their bodies and dreams inversely proportional to the weary boats that bowed to the pressure of gravity.
The night my visa was approved, I placed the letter under my pillow and smiled as I slept dreaming of castles and snow fights. I was finally going in search of the Canadian dream to pursue a creative writing course with partial scholarship.
“I am going to Canada next week. I have been working on it, it has been approved and now I am ready to go” I told my boyfriend, Kele.
My eyes couldn’t capture the range of emotions that flashed across his face; it went from shock before melting into sadness and anger.
“I am sorry” I pleaded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Village people. Village people were the reason I couldn’t tell my boyfriend that I was planning to travel far away to Canada. The village people phenomenon is a light explanation for witchcraft perpetuated by your kinsmen who hold secret meetings at night in their coven, pounding your destiny in a mortar or fanning themselves with your photograph to make sure that your visa mysteriously never gets approved. Village people would frustrate you until you gave up on your japa journey.
“At least you go dey send me Canadian loud” his voice was filled with pain even though he tried to sound funny. I didn’t laugh back; there was nothing funny about sending him the Canadian strain of indica.
The next time I saw Kele to say my final goodbyes, he was butt naked on top of another woman. His explanation was that he had broken up with me and this was his way of coping. How could you break up without informing the other person? This unforeseen estrangement was new for me. I shut the door and my ears to his calls. On the day of my flight, I disappeared into the belly of the airplane, sitting close to the window, watching as my homeland faded before my eyes, till it became an outline on the world map, seen but not be touched.
I arrived in Scarborough on a Friday just before winter. Just before the maple leaves fell from the trees and the wind from the sea slapped my ears and froze my fingers. A damp smell filled my nostrils as I stepped into my room; the first hint of a place in need of sunlight.
My landlord, a pleasant man from Iran, welcomed me, directing me to the basement where I took off my gloves for the first time as the heat warmed me and I breathed a sigh of relief, thanking God for bringing me closer to achieving my goals.
“What is your name?” the landlord asked.
“I am Otitochukwu”
“Oti, what?” he was puzzled at my name which was quite a mouthful.
“Call me Tito” I replied instead.
In the months that followed, my taste buds had to adjust to the pancakes coated with the signature maple leaf syrup, tacos and chips sprinkled generously with salt, Chinese noodle soup, non-sugary Pepsi and spicy chicken, baked with flour.
The people always moved in a hurry, the trains waited for no one and there was no conductor in a dirty singlet, telling you he had no change. There was no one telling you to shift in a rickety bus that contained more people than it could carry; here people preferred to stand than sit on an empty seat next to you.
There were no hawkers chasing after vehicles with lacasera and gala, cashew nuts and groundnuts. The city of Scarborough had streets that seemed asleep even during the day, houses sitting still side by side in the snow.
I took myself as a plant with baby roots snatched from the toxic nursery bed in Nigeria and planted in the icy soil of Canada, cold and alone.
I remembered Nigeria in snatches; roofs of houses overlapping each other, lying like broken china in the sun in cities that suffer from insomnia. Storey buildings where churches and plazas are attached like appendages with speakers raised to alarming decibels vying for the right to make you deaf. Noise was a way of life. In Nigeria, we thrived in the commotion of Christmas morning, showing off our new Christmas shoes and clothes, racing for Christmas service, gossiping over pots bubbling stop blazing fires and chatting while chewing and sucking chicken drumsticks at lunch.
I was shocked when I was greeted with silence on arriving Scarborough Centre Mall and meeting no one because holidays are important for workers to rest and celebrate with their loved ones. I asked a passer-by as I stumbled through my words why the shops were closed and he replied that it was a holiday. My Canadian English was not yet polished; somehow in between, my Nigerian Igbo accent rolled over my tongue and fell out, not quite sure where to land, like an amphibian, bouncing between land and sea.
Excuse my Igbo accent, because it is follow come; the default tone my tongue has known for the past twenty-something years.
I sought for home in the food bags that I carried, rummaging through the Bambara flour, bean flour, bell peppers, and okpeyi. I set the pan on fire and the tomato sauce burned my longing for home, watering my eyes with its spiciness. The first day I cooked egusi, the landlord complained of my strong smelling herbs and the thick smoke that reached the ceiling and set off the smoke alarm.
I sat many nights in front of my laptop, trying to find the words to write about my experience while waiting for my creative class to start. On the first day of class, the snow fell, blocking my vision as I struggled to make out the numbers on the bus for me to get on the right one. I put one foot in the white mass and it swallowed my snow boots and my first instinct was to take a photo and send to my sister.
“Chaiii, this is Canadian Wonder!’ She was excited because she only saw the snow in movies.
Time was a different animal in Canada. As if shy, the sun sunk into the belly of the skies when the clock struck four. I hurried through classes to do video calls with Mama and my siblings before they retired for the night. Like an old black and white TV, life was monotonous and monochromatic, viewed in colours of white and grey as depression loomed over me like the dark clouds.
Anytime, I shuffled through the internal drive that is my brain, it brought back memories of Kele and his betrayal. His big pillowy body would have been a source of warmth in this place where the temperature is constantly in the minus. I had tried so hard to throw those images in the trash just like I had deleted our photographs in my phone but it always ended up in the recycle bin, which regurgitated them, every now and then. My brain refused to spare me memories that I tried so hard to forget. Photographs were easy to delete but the brain is a virtual back-up of memories we think we have erased.
That was why I didn’t warm readily to my classmate when we started school in February. Jules is a fine hunk from France whose ‘Bonjour, ca va?” left me speechless because I wasn’t proficient in French. My reply was always a shy, “Hello”.
It was the day he saw a Chimamanda Adichie book in front of me that our friendship took off like a rocket a friendship that blossomed like the trees in summer into a romantic experience; love that transcended borders as we both pecked at the pieces of English and French we could muster like eager chickens.
My brain finally trashed Kele’s betrayal into a bin bag and downloaded Jules’s files. I learned everything like a fervent student eager to impress her teacher. He comes from a prominent family of overachievers with siblings who attended Ivy League schools and hold high positions in his father’s tech company. He is the rebel with a cause; not in the style of James Dean. Jules is the one who has chosen to live life on his own terms, leaving wealth behind to pursue a course in film making and creative studies. What didn’t I do for love? Duolingo became my favourite app where I traded English words for French words so I could reply his romantic Good Morning messages with a well written note signed with a toi, Otito, instead of the more generic, Yours, Otito because there is something more personal and intentional about penning those words in his own language.
This love is different. It speaks a simple language of sincere dates with people who do not push love to the back burner. It is not transactional in the way covetousness is exalted. Your lover’s affection is not determined by how many luxury wigs he bought you or if he copped you the latest iphone. Love is measured in the distance one goes to put a smile on your face. The love is not premised on the price of expensive Channel purses. Though gifts are good, they are just a plus in understanding that there is someone that loves and cares for you irrespective of anything. Love is simple; it is expressed in the sweetest, little ways that matter; like putting away your phone to stare hard into the eyes of your companion as it snows outside or leaning in for a deep French kiss that warms up your body.
I saw the city anew through his eyes as my guide pointing out easy bus routes on the map and taking me to restaurants I didn’t know existed to expand my culinary experience. He told me where I could buy good chicken, organic fruits and carrots that tasted like the ones we had at home.
We spent Friday nights dancing to Asake in the clubs and ending with Indila wrapped in each other’s arms. Our love expressed itself in Anglo-Francais, a hybrid and cross pollination of two different cultures planted and watered in Toronto like croissant dipped in hot chocolate. We spent many nights in the penumbra of perfumed candlelight, made crass jokes about bad movies, watched epic movies where we argued whether Game of Thrones had a fitting ending, and going over the twist in Shutter Island and wondering why we hadn’t seen it coming.
On our first Valentine date together, he stood at the feet of the stairs, holding red roses and staring up at me like Jack had stared at Rose in the Titanic movie. He was sincere and innocent like a child his mother had surprised with a toy he had been longing for. When he took my hands in his and kissed it, my tongue was full of melting sugar. There were notes lined up in corners of the house and I took time to open each one, as he stared lovingly at me. I cried like a baby at the expressive language. There is a certain tenderness in his cursive handwriting; in the way the t flows into the i and curves into letter o. We are both creatives, who have a shared admiration for the beauty of language; who understand that language in its highest expression is musical.
At dinner, the wine sparkled like the light in his eyes as we poured wine into shapely glasses and I raised a toast in thankfulness of the love I had found and sadness in the loss I felt over the chipping away of my identity in adaptation of foreign taste.
***Chidera Udochukwu-Nduka is an award-winning Nigerian creative writer and pharmacist whose work spans climate change, music, mental health, family dynamics and the African experience. You can catch her on chi_deraa001@Twitter.
