"Hope dey"

Hey there

Over the past six months of writing, it seems I have been sucked into a repetitive loop in which I constantly play down my ability to tell stories, and then I fret over having any original idea to put out. But there is never enough anxiety to put me off acknowledging all the people that go all the way to not only click my URLs and try to sift through all the minefields that constitute my thought process, but somehow they are finding value through all the chaos. Still, if you think about it, it's just a rabbit hole of mild self-loathing mixed with criticism on just about anything, sprinkled with a bit of sarcasm that never seems to end. But as someone who loves happy endings, I will always try to find perspective to the "gloom", because I have religious bias to believe that everything works out in the end. It's not a practical way to live in a world awash with tragedy at every turn, but then it's hope more than anything that gets us through the hard and dreary days of our very short lives.

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We hope to see the dawn break to chase away the horrors of the night. We hope for eggs and sausages with toast as we clamber out of bed, only to be sprung to life by the smell of leftover beans from last night. We hope for our fortunes to change, we hope to get free from debt, and we hope for love. I hope to finally settle down in a small English village not too far from London, so I can get to watch the Arsenal every other weekend. But sometimes it gets less trivial than all of these, and we find that hope is all that stands between life and death. Anne Frank hoped for an end to the second world war that kept her Jewish family stuck in an attic for two years trying to lead normal lives with bombs raining down constantly, just so she could see the sun again in its full glory. She did see the sun again, but by that time she was destined to die in the darkest place known to the Jewish race and indeed all of human history. It is two years to the day when young Nigerians fed up with police brutality and bad governance, stood their ground against the Nigerian military hoping that a sense of loyalty to the flag wrapped around their bodies would be enough to deter their eventual murderers from opening fire.

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Asides the enormous pile of bodies strewn across the Lekki toll that night, closing their eyes for the final time, all across the nation there seemed a collective loss for that one thing we so dearly held on to. Lying on the floor we see that hope has died along with all of its bravest warriors and there was nothing we could do about it. I have to hand it to the Nigerian Government by the way, what their counterparts did in quelling rebellions and dissension against the establishment with stealth over a period of time, they delivered it all in one night for all the world to see; Pain, shame, disbelief, and trauma all balled up in one move straight to the gut. Realistically what were they to do? Listen to our pleas? Bend over to our wishes? Even come to a compromise? It’s been more than 60 years, read the room. Another batch of these narcissists inch ever closer to the corridors of power and that might just be what accelerates our slow descent to complete bankruptcy and solidifies our refugee status.

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How can you move on when justice has largely evaded all the criminals involved in this evil conspiracy? How can you move on when you are riddled with so much survivor's guilt that never seems to fade even as the days and months and now years go by? How can you move on when there is a gnawing feeling that maybe the labors of our heroes might just be in vain? How can we move on when we don’t even know their names? what they fought for, what this country took from them in the past, what they saw in our future as guns were raised towards them and they chose death over surrender. They were the best of us, we all have dreams that this inept nation brimming with incredible potential can finally grow up but they were not driven by dreams alone, there was also love. *In the book Finding me by Viola Davis, she makes reference to a quote by Oprah Winfrey which says “I know for sure what we dwell on is what we become.” There was no precedent of love shown to them by our cruel leaders for them to take solace in, and yet they did not dwell on that. They thought about their parents, they thought about siblings and relatives, they thought about their communities, they thought about every single one of us and that was enough for them.

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There is no justification for what happened that night, no moral lesson we can draw from it, lives were lost and there are not enough words to bring any single one of them back to life, there is not enough compensation for fathers and mothers who lost sons and daughters, the promise of a fresh start is not enough for those who have been forced to seek asylum abroad, all the medical personnel that still remain on this shores are not enough to heal deep seated physical and mental scars of an entire generation. Was Nigeria worth it at all? Not even in the slightest but if we choose hope again, inevitably that is what we become.

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*In her memoir Finding Me, Viola Davis takes you on her journey from extreme poverty and a troubled childhood to finding purpose, finding herself and thereafter finding her place, its such a really good read.

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Till next time my comrades.