A beautiful sadness

It was a relief and a better sight to behold compared to Lagos roads, infested with potholes and the heaps of rubbish that often pile up on roadsides and the drone of generator noises. The drive from Lagos to Benin was smoother this time around. A lot seemed to have changed since the last time I travelled through the Ore and Benin routes during my University days.

As we approached our family compound, where the funeral procession for my late Mother would be held; I felt light-headed. A new sadness blanketed me, the sadness of coming days, when I would feel the world off-kilter without my mum’s usual boisterous and overly protective nature.

At the hilly entrance that led into our family compound near the gate, putting up a bold face, my father was waiting to receive us. I scanned around the ante room thronging with several old men and women from neighbouring quarters for familiar faces, but I couldn’t find any. Where have all the young ones gone? I inquired, as I mentioned the names I could remember.

The last I visited home, there were no mobile phones. Now the sympathizers who rallied around my dad brandied several brands of mobile phones as if it on a war of brands. The tailor down the street who would later amend my traditional blouse had a mobile phone, the palm -wine supplier for the occasion also had a mobile phone.

I wished I was visiting the village again under different circumstances, after eighteen years of being away. My Dad’s tenant at the boy’s quarter hurried over to help with our traveling bags “Welcome back, Ada (a title for a female firstborn). I observed what a sharp contrast his greeting was, when compared with Lagos tenants that you even had to plead with to pay their rent. I thanked him, and in the grey of the evening darkness that was beginning to loom, the air fraught with aromas from several cooking pots, I ached with  almost unbearable emotion that was melancholy, “a beautiful sadness”, according to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for the exciting childhood I had missed and a greater Nigeria, we would have had.

As I would later discover, most of the cousins and friends I knew while growing up in the village had all relocated abroad in search of greener pastures. From history, people often migrated unwillingly as slaves or fled from war and poverty. But, it would appear our youths are now fleeing from “the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness,” imposed by incessant and successive Nigerian governments, in search of the Green card (a mini passport to Heaven). This brings to light the “Visa lottery” phenomena being a glorified form of enslavement.

An impulsive conditioning from birth and a belief system formed in our youth to look toward somewhere else – the Promised Land- other than themselves for fulfilment of destiny. More and more young people are resolute in embarking on dangerous trips to Europe in search of greener pastures and certainty through the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean seas, surviving ubiquitous bandits along these routes among other clear dangers.

An energetic workforce of Africans are exiting in huge numbers away from freedom in penury and stomach infrastructure and tired of the far reaching and unguaranteed slogan, “Leaders of tomorrow.”

In an eclectic contrast, our leaders characterised by this present administration and previous governments, take delight in fleeing at every slightest opportunity to this “Land of Promise,” for loftier medical treatments, expensive holidays and exotic sexual orgies.