Stories From Home: Nigeria

Photos by Natachi Mez

“I had not expected my cousins to have changed, certainly not so radically, simply because they had been away for a while. Besides, shona was our language. What did people mean when they forgot it” (42). Excerpt from Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi

In 2024, my younger brother, aged 23 at the time, went home for the first time. Home in this context is our village in southeastern Nigeria. “Our” village. “Our” home.  First time. 23 years. Does the equation compute? It is beyond me. Beyond my time. Beyond my generation.

What makes a home? What does a home make? Does a home spit out 23 year old children? Who built the home that might welcome someone who has been gone so long as forever? What is the gap between us and where we come from? Does it matter if we forget what mattered us, what molded us, what made our mattering possible?

23 years old and my brother is meeting this home for the first time in person, but home is also an embodied thing, woven into the fabric of flesh and spirit. This was a reunion between entities that can never be completely severed despite the schisms and gaps in language and location. What is his, is beyond him. What is mine is beyond me. It is ours. Ours. ours.

Even when native language is broken in our mouths. Even when we forget the ways of our ancestors, we birth new memory, descendents of yesterday. Still, I ask the land, speak so we may remember ndu, flowing and concentrated. So that we may harness and access more fully our birth’s gifts and our birth’s rights. So that we may be baptized in knowledge, old and new. 

Drenched in colors of soil & sky. Real illusions: our mother’s face but not our mother –her sister. Our grand aunt’s prayer, sister to a grandmother we never met. She knows our names so well. Love and grief, pour from my eyes. Crying in and crying out. Out of body, laughter. Out of laughter, sweating. Feet, racing. Dribbling. Football. Motorcycles and smoke-like dust scattering. Double dutch. Not tied by the ropes, jumping between them. Running in the village. Little goats scamper. Little goats chased. Running. Cardio. Hearts racing. We are beat. We are love. We bring our heat and anger and competition. We look and lose. We win. Somehow, we are all here.

Much has occurred, if only I might find the language.

Much has occurred, if even I don’t find the language.

My brother is home. And so am I.