How to Sleep and Wake up in Another Working Country
Anything is possible for those who believe, right?
7:00 am
I wake up to the soft pattering sound of the rain on the roof tempering in my ears.
I am greeted by the pungent petrichor, a warm reminder that I am Nigerian.
Still Nigerian, even though I identify as British.
A two-year-old has just handed me a picture of a cow, nudging me to ask ‘What sound does a cow make?’ so he can respond with wide eyes full of blind ecstasy, ‘Mooooooo’.
But I am not in the mood. Especially today, I am not in the mood.
However, I go ahead and ask ‘What sound does a cow make?’. I ask because my feelings have nothing to do with him.
He cannot know that expletives are running through my mind and have now reached the corners of my lips, yet I have to be careful with my words.
Not because of him, but because of me.
Everything has been reminding me about the power of words.
This is even beyond the constant reminder about being mindful of words that Pastor Poju Oyemade drills into my ears every Sunday.
But the only way I know he is right is because this morning, I have just chosen not to be insane.
I have purposely sighed ‘it is well’ a million times to displace the unnamable emotions in my belly.
The sour, vile and bitter emotions.
There is no need to iterate what is going on in the country.
It is visible to the blind. It is as high as the heavens, reaching the clouds. How can anyone not see it?
Yesterday, at Ebeano supermarket, after being greeted by the harsh gaze of outrageous prices of regular items, I noticed the frames up for sale.
They were quotes from Serena Williams, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jeff Bezos.
I had a quote too that I wanted to frame—‘I want to sleep and wake up in another working country’.
I had a teeming rage inside of me that segued into an intense urge to smash all the frames—save for Jeff Bezos’ because his quote had something to do with having fun— grind them to powder, then offer it as a sacrifice to the heavens in the middle of Lekki-Ajah road.
The fulminations brimming in my soul lie on top of each other, each one heavier than the one underneath but I pretend to be sane.
I know that this is the time to test my true character.
After all, if I say that I am sane, it is only because I have conversed with insanity, felt its raw cavernous tongue down my throat and smiled back.
I stare at my to-do list and proceed to correct the typos as if it is the most important thing to do.
It is the same way I squint to check the date again as if it may have magically changed overnight. As if the year is not running before my tired eyes.
I hesitate before embracing social media but the longing is as thick as the heat wave that tormented mere mortals in the past few weeks.
I give in. I am deluged again.
The memes are funny but I know that this time, humour can not save anyone.
I am reminded of the evidence of humour reducing pain that Jia Jiang explained in ‘Rejection Proof’.
The research proved that humour— laughter specifically can actually mitigate pain.
It means that your pain threshold significantly increases when you are watching comedy or when you laugh.
Laughing, dancing and singing produce endorphins—a different kind of opioid that fights pain and makes us feel good.
I am aware that this has been our coping mechanism for years and I wonder if this is truly the way to keep going because my awareness is suddenly greater than my need to laugh.
Twitter gives me a headache so I leave, rolling my eyes before it settles on my wallpaper—Mark 9:23.
But my eyes are not on the highlighted passage because some unnecessary applications—that I ought to get rid of but I don’t because I am not sure if I have an unhealthy attachment to letting things go since they were once useful to me or maybe it is not that serious—eclipse some parts of it.
Instead, my eyes are trained on verse 24. The father who needs Jesus’ help is crying ‘Help me with my doubts’.
Reading it over and over snaps me to the vicissitudes in circumstance, yet a common bane—doubt. I realise that I need help with my doubts too.
I later find out that doubt has a colour—it is a darker murky indigo.
I know this colour because it is so familiar.
It strikes me how all of a sudden, I am like the father, crying but instead of ‘Help me with my doubts’, I say ‘God abeg’.
I say it multiple times that it begins to sound like a spiel—the premeditated ones that beggars chant nasally with hands transfixed on car windows during traffic, nodding their heads in syncopation with each word.
As an ardent daydreamer, I am finding it hard to even dream.
This is how I know that I need a break from my mind and my thoughts. Even daydreaming cannot save me.
I am tempted to have a full-blown conversation with myself but I secretly remember my sister prompting that it may be a sign of a mental illness.
I distract myself again with meaningful work this time.
I convince myself that because a path is exponential, it means that you may keep moving sideways till you are suddenly propelled.
I wonder about the path this country is moving towards.
11:11 am
I start wondering if belief has a colour and if I have truly felt it or seen even a flash of it.
Before I have time to ponder, the bubbly two-year-old hands me another card.
It is not the picture of a cow this time and I smile in relief.
It is the picture of an aeroplane which suddenly reminds me of Diary of a Naija Girl’s tweet that did not just linger, but camped in my mind for hours ‘I wish I could sleep and wake up in another working country’.
I smile at his oblivious eyes and he smiles back.
I make a funny face, and ask to my surprise, ‘What sound does a cow make?’ without waiting for his answer.
Here are the lines that had me smiling and shaking my head side to side :
"After all, if I say that I am sane, it is only because I have conversed with insanity, felt its raw cavernous tongue down my throat and smiled back."
"I later find out that doubt has a colour—it is a darker murky indigo."
Poetry.
I loved the closing line too. It's like something out of a fabulous short story.
You better always respond to him with the brightest smile 😂😂😂. Mooooooo