It’s 8pm in Agbowo. New Year’s Day. I have just returned to my apartment, and back from home where I have spent two days with my family to observe the crossover night and to celebrate the new year’s day. And it has been really exciting moments, reuniting with my sisters after a very long time, and clocking greetings with old friends amidst — you guessed it — boisterous laughter, back-patting, and handshakes.
The toll bell has died down now, the last knockout fired, and its echo last heard in the tiny whisper of my mom bidding me bye, and my little sister nodding to my vague promises to visit home often, and I had set forth in the first twilight of a new year and happy to be back in my space, where after a cold shower, I rescinded into the warmth of a couch, cutting cognac with orange juice with a lot to reflect and think about.
I’ve always engaged with home from a distance — not necessarily the way I wanted it but how it has been since that harmattan morning in early January 2008, when I packed my bags and left home for secondary school, a practice that had followed me through the years, carrying home within the distance like a bird of travel, and letting nostalgia enliven the memories I hold of it.
New year’s day has become the highlight of the year that passed, basking in my mother’s indulgence and the presence of loved ones. I helped in the kitchen, washed the dishes, dressed chickens, sliced onions, and, at some point helped served the visitors. And seeing old friends off, we’d walked again through the streets and alleys of our old blocks, and laughed at the defective memories of the mischiefs we caused in our adolescent years before the cities came calling us with the promises of exile.
I sit in the half-light and listen to the year that stretches itself before me, but I was affronted by the memories of the house I just left behind — my mother’s loving eyes watching me as I ease myself into the self appointed chores — not chores now, because in that light of reminiscence, chores like that becomes experiences that one quietly longs for.
In the distance, music starts from a loud stereo, and a streak of light shoots into the clouds, disappearing into the waiting night sky. My niece’s voice screaming out my name reaches out to me from somewhere in the dark, but there is no body, no figure, only voices. The light flickers and goes out immediately. My phone rings — someone is calling. I look out into the window; the earth surges forward, nothing waits. Someone is singing. It will be a long year.