I stayed in Nigeria for years after it was clear that Nigeria did not want me. I stayed because my mother was there. Because I did not have the money. Because leaving felt like agreeing with them that there was no place for me at home. And because, underneath all of that, I loved it: the language, the food, the noise, the church, the red earth on the road to Obinze.
The last straw
I have written the sequence of events in Owerri to London and I will not repeat it here. The short version is that something was done to me, that when I went to report it I was the one threatened with prison, and that after that there was no version of staying that did not end in the ground. My mother understood before I did. She was the one who said go.
You do not leave Nigeria because you stop loving it. You leave because it will not let you love it and live.
The flight
The Port Harcourt road at dawn. Owerri behind me, going grey in the harmattan. A bus, then an airport, then a plane, then England, cold and grey in a different way. I had a bag and a phone with everything on it. If you have made that journey, you know the specific silence of the airport gate, where you are not yet gone and no longer home.
What it costs
- Your people. The Igbo word for stranger is the same one used for a guest and for a foreigner. In England I am all three.
- Your name. No one can say Ifechi. Nobody knows what Nwaorisa means. I am Jay to most people here.
- Your standing. At home I was somebody's son, somebody's brother, a man from a known house. Here I am a case, a file, a form.
- The idea that the law would protect you. It does, here, more than there. But protection is not the same as belonging, and every gay African in Europe learns the difference.
To those thinking about it
Do not do it on a rumour. There is a whole industry of people who will take your money for a visa that does not exist and a route that ends in a container. If you are in danger, the first step is a safe night, not an airport. Call the support line. If you are already in the UK and need help with your claim, organisations such as Rainbow Migration and Micro Rainbow exist for exactly this; the support page has links.
And if you go: take your photographs. Take your mother's phone number written on paper. Take the version of yourself that laughed in the sun in Owerri. You will need him.