The first months
Nobody warns you about the light. In Owerri the sun comes up at six and goes down at six, every day of the year. In England in December it is dark at four in the afternoon and you sit in a room wondering what you did. Nobody warns you that you can be surrounded by people and go a week without a conversation. Nobody warns you that the freedom you crossed the world for arrives as paperwork.
But I remember the first time I walked past two men holding hands in the street and nobody looked. I stopped and watched them go, and I had to sit down.
The NHS
I will say plainly what I owe the National Health Service. HIV treatment in England is free, regardless of where you come from or your immigration status, and I have been treated with more dignity in a sexual health clinic here than in any institution in the country I was born in. The medication is one pill a day. My viral load is undetectable. I will write more about that in the next chapter.
Nigerians in England
There are more Igbo people in London than in some Nigerian towns, and we bring the country with us: the churches, the food, the WhatsApp groups, and the attitudes. A gay Nigerian in England learns quickly that the diaspora can be as watchful as Owerri. I have been recognised in a shop by a man from Imo State and seen his face change. I have also been fed, housed and prayed over by Nigerians here who knew exactly who I was and did not care. Both are true. The second is winning.
England did not give me a home. It gave me a place to stand while I build one, and that was more than I had.
What I do here
I write. Most of the books were finished here, at a small table by a window. I run the support line with volunteers in three countries, which mostly means my phone is never off. I keep the journal. And I am learning to be a person who is not hiding, which turns out to be a skill like any other: you are bad at it at first.
What I miss
My mother's voice in the next room. Sunday. The smell of the rain hitting hot dust. Ofe owerri cooked properly. Being able to read a stranger's face. The word nna from someone who means it. I am not going to pretend England replaced any of it. That is not what England is for.