Hidden

by Uche Nwosu (Nigeria)

I didn't expect to find Nigeria

My nights were usually very chilled. The perfect silence, distracted by the honks of moving Dangote and Lafarge trucks. The sharpness of their sounds as they thrust the deep dark of the day is an experience I enjoy as I plan lesson notes to be used in school the next day. The teacher in me! It is weird how I left the city of Lagos where I worked as an inventory assistant to come serve as a primary school teacher in Itori - of all places! Who even knows where that is? I didn't. But I wanted to begin this adventure of making impact in a village again. I wanted to be away from the hustle-and-bustle of the urban life. "It is the community between Sango and Abeokuta", a colleague informed. "Quite close to the state known as the center of excellence, and the base of the Lafarge Cement Factory", he continued, as we got to know of our posted locations for the field-work of the fellowship program with Teach for Nigeria in the last days at the summer training institute. The mention of Lagos made goosebumps grew on my skin. "It is close to home after all", I muttered to myself. I spent the first four months with my assigned school partner John, in the same self-contained apartment until we parted ways as roommates which at first was not a preferred decision that later turned out to be favorable. My new place - just about a five-minute walk from John's, my former place - gave the serenity needed to immerse into the community through meditations and reflections. Severally, my neighbor would complain about how I survive being alone in the seven-room apartments that is usually very quiet especially when all of its occupants were away. "Dey there, na my estate be this", I'd respond, trying to show how I liked it that way. John never liked Itori. He felt it was too rural and did not make his side hustle thrive as it should. Save for his role in the classroom which is a contractual agreement that pays his bills, he would have been long gone. He probably forgot how much power supply he enjoyed better than in the average Nigerian city or where he came from. I saw things differently from the way he did. I got up one cold morning from the harsh pierce of the harmattan, and after lauds set out for a walk in my hoodie. The walk was for a search for something I did not lose. It wasn't like I usually take such walk. As I pocketed my hands in the sweatshirt punished by the deafening breezy whistles of the cold weather, I traveled several distances on foot that morning. In this travel, I made sure to be conscious of the immediate sorroundings seeing places I had not been to before despite having stayed there for more than a year. I made a resolve after I returned from that journey. Unlike in the cities, the lands here are mostly unoccupied, filled with bushes of short grasses and tall trees, some, uncompleted buildings that have molded blocks used as foundations, and boundaries crested with the name of its owners. "If you come here in the next three or five years, this place no go be as e be now o", the man who had taken me to the surveyor who was to sell the piece of land, stressed, trying to tell me of the development that will happen in the community in years to come with an example of how he bought his where he built a house and regretted not doing more than he did. He didn't need to convince me, I trusted my instinct. Mine became added as one of those who had their names fixed in stones with a portion, not too long before I finished my two-year assignment. Itori can be a Lagos if people saw it.