I recently wrote a social media post about Archivi.ng’s upcoming fellowship and felt a pang of jealousy as I typed out the words.
I’m part of a writers’ collective called The AprilCentaur Network and every week, I put together a list of paying opportunities for Nigerian (and African) storytellers such as myself. A lot of the time, I can also apply for them even though I am currently not based in Nigeria.
Sometimes, I can’t, not only because I am now outside of Nigeria but also because I am enrolled in a particularly tasking Master’s program in aerospace engineering. Yet, I do not feel jealousy.
But with this one, I felt it; like the kind of pangs I get when I forget to eat all morning and find myself stumbling halfway through the afternoon with a light head and blurry vision. This pang was fleeting, but palpable.
The Archivi.ng program is a 6-month fellowship that will see writers, journalists, filmmakers and all sorts of history-loving professionals work on projects that help to demystify a particular aspect of Nigerian history. And the monthly stipend is what I—at this stage of my career—consider to be a reasonable amount.
I think I’m the perfect candidate. I am a journalist (even though I only recently accepted this title) and a creative writer. For the past year, since I started producing longform journalistic content, I have been plunged into the depths of Nigerian history. I have uncovered the good, the bad and the ugly, all in equal measure convincing me of this fact: I am in love with history. And it figures, because I have always been in love with knowledge, the quest for it, the possession of it, but history takes it a step further by allowing me to connect the dots from past to present and make projections for the future. With history, I see that our heroes and villains of past are not that different from those of present. I see the foolishness of mistakes repeated simply because of ignorance, the lack of awareness of our history. If I were to apply for the fellowship, I would say all this and more, brandishing my accomplishments over my 2-year writing career. But I cannot apply for the fellowship. Because I uprooted my life from Nigeria and moved to France for the sake of a dream.
I’ve known that I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer since I was a teenager. The dream was first planted sometime in JSS2, when an aeronautical engineer explained what his job was about at a Career’s Day event in school. The words ‘aeronautical engineer’ alone sounded superlatively cool because I thought planes were amazing—a scientific miracle—but when he explained it, I realised it was also the kind of job befitting of a truly smart person. Still, I continued to flirt with the idea of being a lawyer—because I liked to argue a lot—or architect—because I thought designing buildings was also really cool. But at that classic crossroads, when I was faced with the decision to either be a Science or Arts student, I realised the sciences were what exhilarated me. However, I sucked at Technical Drawing, so I gave up on the idea of being an architect and I wasn’t a big fan of biology. Ergo, engineering. But I wouldn’t be just any engineer. Nope, I would be an aeronautical engineer; a superlatively cool, truly smart aeronautical engineer who got to design and manufacture scientific miracles.
I mean, I always had my writing dreams too, but those were dreams I could achieve on my own terms and at my own pace while building a career in aeronautical engineering. I would take as long as I wanted to write novels and release them whenever I felt like. I would be a writer till I died, but engineering was something I would eventually have to retire from. I didn’t need to go to school for writing, but I definitely needed to go to school for engineering.
So, it was settled then. I took mostly science subjects in my senior secondary and sixth form (A Levels) school years and after the latter, I published my first novel, perhaps to set it in stone that I was still seriously going to pursue this writing thing. I went on to study aerospace technology for my bachelor’s degree. And when I got back from my university in Dubai, there was the limbo period where I had to wait for my degree certificate to get to me in Nigeria before I could apply for NYSC.
In the meantime, I thought, why not see what this writing (profession) thing is about? So, I sought writing jobs and got them till I somehow found my way to journalism. It was ironic; I had always said I didn’t see myself doing anything outside of creative writing because it was restrictive. Non-creative writing didn’t give my words the freedom to dance and sing and bend into queer shapes. But I didn’t realise before I took on those jobs that a huge part of my love for knowledge was also sharing it, and that was exactly what journalism was about. Then I discovered literary journalism, which would allow my words dance too, maybe not a full legwork routine, but a few shakes here and there. In summary, I fell in love with journalism too, perhaps at the same time I fell in love with history. I loved being a journalist. I loved seeing and seeking stories in everyday life. I loved having my next big story lined up.
After my NYSC year ended in October 2023, I stuck to just the writing and journalism thing. Not because I was done with engineering, but because I was done with the commuting in Lagos thing, walking the God-abeg filthy streets to catch a bus, struggling to grab a seat in buses that looked like they were closer to death than life, the headache-inducing noises, the incessant overstimulation that chipped away from my peace day after day. I also felt like the prospects for what I actually wanted to do—aeronautical engineering rather than aircraft maintenance—were slim. I was always going to do a master’s in engineering again, so I bided my time till I could.
Now, I am here in France, the country that houses the company that has long since represented the apex of my dream as an aeronautical engineer. And I told myself I would continue the journalism thing, when I could make time between my studies. But sometimes, I wonder how I can truly be a journalist who tells authentic African stories when I am not in Africa. I mean, there are a lot of things I can do from afar with utmost innovation, but there are also some elements of research that seem impossible to do on foreign soil. And the Archivi.ng fellowship was a stark reminder of that.
There is also the aspect of remuneration. In Nigeria, I could be comfortable with the money I made from my writing career, but what the Nigerian/African publications pay just doesn’t convert here when I need to pay rent! So, I decided to start steering my gaze towards Western publications, but I then wondered how much do they really care about the African stories I want to tell.
I get inspired easily here. Because I am in a new place, observing how the scorching sun and numbing cold wage wars for dominance, observing how the people speak and laugh and express, and redefine what can be transported with a bicycle . For some reason, there are people here I never thought would be locals. When I thought of French people before, I thought of North Africans, West Africans and Central Africans who were colonised by the French and long since settled here. I thought of Caucasians, including Europeans who settled in their neighbouring country decades ago, or only in recent years. I did not think of Asians, the Chinese or Indians who spoke French as fluently as the descendants of those who invented the language. I forgot that there were more motivating factors for migration than colonialism and proximity. Did I not also move here as an Anglophone West African in search of a dream, a new life?
I talk with strangers here more often than I would in Nigeria too. In the early days, before I got a hang of the public transport system, I would ask every Black or Arab Uber/Bolt driver where they were from; because I was curious about their stories, but also because I wanted to normalise speaking French, and I felt safer doing so with them. The drivers were from Congo-Brazzaville, Morocco and Niger. We laughed together and had thrilling conversations, as much as my understanding of their native language could allow. But what I always found fascinating was their answer to the question:‘Vous venez d’où?’ regarding their country of origin.
Even if they were born in France or had lived in France for decades and were French citizens, they always mentioned their original provenance. It was almost as if they felt that they were that first. I wonder whether, if I hadn’t been born and raised in Nigeria, would I claim to be from Nigeria first and foremost? In Dubai, it was not so. People of Asian ethnicity who were US citizens simply said they were from ‘the States’ and probing further would then lead to the country of descent..
There are stories I want to tell as an African in France, but writing here seems less viable because literature here is in a language I am yet to master, and using a robotic translator would kill the beauty of the stories. More so, while it was easy to converse with taxi drivers, I have not yet found the confidence to do so with the Francophone Africans on my campus, whom I would have to interview for some stories I want to tell. There is so much of our lives that has been determined by who colonised us: our languages, our cultures. There is an unspoken chasm, maybe one I have created in my head, but a chasm all the same. And I need to surmount it before I can do what I need to do.
So now, I just stick to observing. I keep my eyes peeled on my daily commutes. I listen, as much as I can, before I plug in my earphones to transport myself to familiar territory. I observe how the French love rest. ALMOST everything here closes by 8. Banks are closed on Mondays. Supermarkets (except for Carrefour) are closed on Sundays. Lunch breaks last for 2 hours. The French take the philosophy of rest very seriously and maybe that is challenging me to rest more too. I constantly tussle between feeling like I am engaging in rest or just outright laziness.
While my journalism career has taken a bit of a backseat, I would say my general writing career is still in a good place. I’ve been writing a lot in transit, on the bus, on the tram. Because I don’t have as much time to do so when I’m settled at home, between schoolwork and adulting tasks like having to prep my meals. But it’s okay because public transport here is conducive for that. I am not hindered by uncomfortable heat or guarded about being on my phone on an unsafe street. Windows aren’t down and there are no nuisances hanging around looking for whom to devour. I finished a whole 1,300-word personal essay on tram rides over a couple of days, a feat I most likely would not have been able to achieve in Danfos or Koropes.
I find that I have been plunging myself into experiences for the plot, but also because I want to discover more about myself. Listening to a live performance of a heavy metal band and doing my whitest-girl-dance—animated jumps and aggressive head bops, going out late for drinks at the city centre, going for a wine tasting at a wine museum because I am after all, in the one of the wine capitals of the world. The more I live the more the deeper the well of experience I can draw from to write.
So, I will keep living while I wait: For the editors to accept my pitches, for my confidence level to grow enough to launch me to the other side of the chasm, for the right writing gigs to avail themselves. I have been uprooted, but one thing my people have never stopped doing is finding new grounds for our dangling roots to resettle in.
***Oyindamola Depo-Oyedokun is a writer, engineer and self-proclaimed polymath who’s passionate about telling authentic African stories and making complex concepts plain.
