TO COME HERE
an essay by Mifuelayo Michael Ojeifo, a Nigerian poet and musician currently studying in the United States.
Now that I think about it, maybe I’m living my father’s dream, or a genetic equivalent of a passion for conquest and a search for the unknown, passed down. When I was growing up in Nigeria my dad used to make jibes and jokes about people, politics and things happening in general. He was so concerned about politics and the news. He’d always have CNN on or the BBC, and he would make us watch it, or Aljazeera or CCTV news, if we weren’t lucky enough to get him to switch it to Super Sports or Trance, or find a way to sneakily switch it ourselves to those channels or the Cartoon Network or Comedy Central. Sometimes, or a lot of the time, in the house, things were rocky and negative, and it felt like he was bullying us most of the time. We still had small moments, little moments where it felt like a true family, or maybe my conception of a true family, like one I must’ve seen on the Disney Channel. But, there’d be things going on on CNN (like there always were), and he would have all these notes filled up with stuff like history, dates, great stories, great people.
Often I’d wake up in the middle of the night, or I’d just be up and unable to sleep, or busy watching something, and there he’d be, writing. My dad would just straight up be writing, and sometimes we would have conversations, which would be mostly him just talking (though he did care about the family’s input a lot too); but usually it was just my dad talking about the western world, admiring Obama, the presidents, talking about terrorists. I can still see that grimy look on his face whenever he encountered the problem of evil in a news story about a bombing or a killing that he could do nothing immediate about, or that he could not control - like the Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya, September 21, 2013. He was disappointed and angered when he saw the news about the attack, we all were. But even before that, the news always provoked him in some way that affected his mood, or how he saw things, or what he said. And the news could either be the cause of his mood or amplify it or influence what he was feeling somehow.
One day when I was very young, he said to me, “You’re going to go to the USA or Canada.” He said it with such a dreamer’s tone that I believed it - a dreamer tapping into the inherent dreamer in me. I knew for sure I could do anything, but his confidence in me was 1000x added XP power to my sense of self-belief. I can barely remember what age I was when he said it to me; I believe I was about 8 years old (so that’s what I’m going to settle on). Actually I think I was about 11, maybe. Well, whatever age I was, I made it my secret hope, my undying goal to one day get to the US or Canada. And now I’m here.
Regrettably, when it came time to realize the dream, my dad was of no help at all. This was due to his deteriorating, toxic condition and the toxic, though sometimes happy dynamic of his relationship with my mother. Without the sweat and tears of my sister Deborah and the unending support of my brother Roje, I never would have found the good class in Ghana. There I learned and studied with a study group; I ate with my siblings, or alone with the mosquitoes. I fetched water to shower and water to drink. I made many friends, and I got scared of the dark, especially when fetching water from the well at night, or whenever the lights went out because of our family’s history of encountering snakes. I kept learning with my group, took the SATs, and got the highest score out of my group. It was shocking because I was certainly not the ‘smart guy.’ I wrote my essay about Helen Keller, and I believe that gave me a good essay score. At the time I was reading an immense number of biographies, many on Wikipedia. It was like I had just discovered the internet.
After that period, I had to go to Lagos, Nigeria to process my visa. I remember, on the day my mum and I were to go to get my document, some sort of shooting occurred about 500 yards from us and the visa office. My mum was very religious, superstitious and spiritual. I knew from the look on her face that she felt someone was trying to stop us from getting the visa. So much was happening at that point in my life, and so much had already happened. I had no idea what was going on. I started to only want to see things logically, and I thought well, “it just so happens that the day we’re going to finish the visa and do the final process of the visa, people started shooting.” And then I thought, wait… “IT JUST SO HAPPENS THAT THE DAY WE’RE GOING TO FINISH THE VISA AND DO THE FINAL PROCESS OF THE VISA PEOPLE STARTED SHOOTING!!!!” My god, what are the odds? 500 yards out from us? My mum was panicking, not as she often would, though. She kept her cool because of the necessity of the situation; her child was about to go to the US, she could brag to her friends, she was a loving woman, she loved her child, she wanted things to be agreeable for him. But we got out of there.
I remember prior to that my dad had refused to provide a bank statement for me to have the necessary paperwork for my interview, out of sheer hate. I don’t know what was going through his head then, but it was not love. I think it was evil. I was his last son, his last child. I was crushed. I shed tears and felt a sort of painfully curious sting. Why should I even be thinking about it? Why should I be asking why? Why should I be asking myself why he refused to provide a bank statement? There are some questions we have no right to ask ourselves, questions that seek answers to things we don’t have answers for. If a young child is forced to answer ‘why’, in positions of unrequited love or inquisition, we can be sure to find him/herself stumbling in place, groping for answers we have no right to ask. Even if they put us in a bind, we have no right to ask how they found the answers to their questions. In this way trauma can often be the beginning of psychology. Lest one beget trauma, let them watch that they do not be the source of trauma, to themselves and to others. If truth is trauma, then at a young age one’s future might be born before the conscious life begins.
Because of my dad’s hostility, or envy, I had to go to my uncle and get a bank statement from him. I had struggled and done everything I could do (with the help of my siblings and my mother) to get to the point of my departure for the US. To get me to this point and then to ask my dad for ONE thing and have him say ‘no.’ After years and years of hardship that we all had gone through at the hands of life: my sickness that almost certainly took me out when I was fourteen; my parents fighting and raising hell so the whole neighborhood and all my friends and all the families could see. And he says ‘NO’, after I relieve him and my mother of the sometimes burden of me. Yes, of course, maybe it is quite unhealthy for a child to see him/herself as a burden, but it can often be the case when you feel like you have to beg your father for the basic life amenities, like asking him for food that he bought and locked in the closet. The memories are oppressive. Like how he put such emphasis on our education, and then when I came in first in my class in my senior year of high school—or as we say, Secondary school—I brought him the report, and he had nothing to say. He just casually went about the day, as though nothing special had happened.
That was my father. But if you feel yourself thinking he was an evil man, stop. He was not. He was the opposite of good and evil. He was random, at least he seemed random. Though I beg to see that there is always a fixed aim to each person’s actions, whether unconscious or conscious. But his behavior was excruciatingly RaNdOm, and it was joyous, and it was painful.
After I eventually got the bank statement from my uncle, who deserves much credit, my DAD paid for the plane ticket for me to attend my US school. What a guy. He even accompanied me and my mum to my visa interview before we went back and finalized paperwork at the office, 500 yards out from the shooting. And when it was time to leave, my dad helped me with stuff, like getting my luggage. We went out and got my luggage together; I still have the luggage today. My sister came back from Ghana - I think my brother was still in Ghana - and then my mom, and dad and sister escorted me to the airport before I boarded the plane and left. The sense of adventure and exploration, exploring the unknown, definitely felt genetic. It felt like a natural human destiny, and a part of me would like to think that I paid that back to my father, for maybe giving me that edge, that little edge, that DNA, that sense of wildness, in adventure, to come here.
Mifuelayo Michael Ojeifo is a Nigerian poet and musician currently studying in the United States. His latest life goal is to travel to Mars.
Editing credits for this piece: Janet Hamill