Leaked Letter From the Nigerian Graduate -By Adegoke Hussein

Dear Mọ́bíkẹ,

I write earnestly to the future we share. How is dad, mum, your siblings and everyone else around you? It’s soothing to my hearing always when I learn you kick like a baby. It warms my heart anytime you giggle with your dimples. I would always love you like a child loves the candy. I would cherish you like a king cherishes his crown. I behold your face every day, Mọ́bíkẹ, and I have engraved it in the crust of my convoluted heart. I wrote your name in gold and set it across the sky. Lo! It was covered by the clouds. I doddled the same in Latin and would put it on the sea but it got ferried by the waves. I have etched Mọ́bíkẹ in my ribs so I could scribe with it each time I write a letter like this. You’re the pearl in my garden and the coral in my sea; you are the star in my cosmos and the galaxy in my world. You’re my friend, Mọ́bíkẹ; my fortress and forte. You’re the love of my life; a tingling sensation like no other and a scarce raw gold.

I’m at your doorstep again, my love; albeit to appeal for the sorrow I have caused you – the smiles I took away from you and my failure at securing your escape from the gripping bondage of the home you have wanted to leave. I know I have riled you. I know I have hurt you and you are simply livid over my inadequacies. I know you can barely tolerate my failings any longer at getting a decent job that would take care of you. I know I owe you tons of apologies for my zero earnings that would make me shy away from the responsibility of being your man. I am thirty, yet the life we want, the dreams we share, our desires, and aspirations—that are a lot different from the Plebian’s guess—are what I’ve failed to make possible. Mọ́bíkẹ, you must hold forsooth. You need to be patient indeed. Mọ́bíkẹ, you must be calm for me. You must give me more time for I know these trying times would pass. Wait! Have I ever told you how I became a victim of this time? Have I written you ever on the failed promises of my parents? Have you too bothered to ask of my own side of the story? Have you a guess of why I avowed that this clime is being unkind to me?

As I stepped out of the womb, Mọ́bíkẹ́, my educated parents thought the path they chose for me was best. So, I started attending classes ever before I could walk, learning by rote from my dear teacher in crèche. I sung poems I could not even understand. I chanted rhymes I could barely make any meaning of. “Rain! Rain! Go away! Come again another day…” my voice would aggressively echo, and I would wonder why it was necessary we drive away what was not upon us, pouring.

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star…” we would exclaim at some other times, however it was that the brightest sun that would frustrate any attempt to admire the comet was out. Many things never added up for me, Mọ́bíkẹ, but I trod along. I would echo the English alphabets in my midgety voice and ditto the numerals. When I surpass my good friends at this, I would then be lauded with some deafening claps. I tolerated those noises, yet. “They are meant to motivate you, my boy” Mom would urge. She was the woman from whom I got snatched and whisked away to school at a tender age. She was the one from whom I wasn’t well fed (read: breastfed) just so I could pursue “books” and not those other ones that end in “bs”. I was patient still.

I grew older and my speech had become clearer. I could then mutter a few words to challenge mom, once, on why children like me must wake and leave for school before sunrise. “Our brains are still young,” I thought, “and upstanding by 5am five times in every seven days would do us no good.” She told me it was the way; and perhaps, that I was too inquisitive. So, I shushed. Mọ̀bìkẹ! A few more things bothered me, nay, confused me but I dare won’t say. We would read in English all the time but in the periods of mathematics, we wrote “Arabic” numerals. Yet, the “2” my school teacher wrote never looked the same with the “٢” I was taught by my Arabic teacher in evening classes. I swallowed my thought on that too.

Mọ̀bìkẹ! I was almost 10 when I read in my MacMillan English text that “Agbo lived in a town of Lagoon which is not far from Ibadan…” I’m right in my 30s today and I have never met anyone person who recounted Agbo’s travails. I can only imagine why my young mind had to be so filled with plots that were just untrue. This isn’t even about Agbo who neither ever existed nor visited Lagos, “the town of Lagoon”. But this is about the volumes of such-like mendacity I was molested for, in my tenderness, in my inability to assimilate properly. It was for an equally unfound reason I got tormented in the logic (say: illogicality) of numbers. Don’t let me even get started with how zero which meant “nothing” would follow up to two or any other number to mean “something”. It had meant “a lot” if it came in company of its siblings.

Cupcake, I was in JSS3 and “x” was the most notorious English alphabet in my mathematics classes. It was either found wanton or outrightly declared missing. My blame was in not asking my teacher then for the bounty placed on “x” each time I was made to query its whereabouts. I would find “x,” some other times, my teacher would do so, ultimately, but none between us ever received encomiums of monetary sort. Time went by and I hated this alphabet so much I could not tolerate its sight or the news of it being on the loose. It’s a tingling sensation when I patrolled for it and would strike down onlooking identical letters (and numbers) for no blame of theirs. “m cancel m, 2 cancel 2” I would mutter to myself while on this cause. I wondered why any student had to be on a virtual shooting spree, to be a champion. But I tell you, dear, whoever “shoots” well in that cause did best. I don’t know how you do it over there, but our compensations here for murdering “x” are marks and not money. If you receive it all, the marks, you are celebrated as an academic guru.

Mọ́bíkẹ, we should be hopeful, for our love will still survive. I shall come for you one day and bring you down to my hood; this place of cool ambience, sunshine, moderate climate, springs and thick forest. No, don’t be scared yet for having read “forest”. It’s our “amusement park” over here, a lush and greenish habitat to amazing wildlife. We could go hunting, you know? Well, I intend to intimate you with how lovers like us play it out in this part of the world. Oh! Damn it! We don’t need the candles! What for? We don’t need any bouquet of flowers, darling. We don’t even need to see the movies. What movies? You see, my love, what we do here is to explore nature in its simplistic rawness. The birds would serenade for us as we pass time under the Ọdàn tree. This would be soothing, Mọ́bíkẹ, I promise. When I make you smell the sea breeze as I put sands from the beaches in your face, you would be glad I did. You don’t need your wigs, alike. Here, behind my house resides Lálonpé who could weave your long hairs into a million threads. Mọ́bíkẹ! I know you don’t bleach. Do not start. You’re black and I, too, am. This identical plumage, I know, would wax our esteemed love much stronger.

I would show you the stars and the clouds and birds of colourful sorts as we dine in the benevolence of nature. I would make you sip from the pot and make you eat from “àwo tán ganran” and you would crave more of these adventures ever after.

I don’t want to bore you with my plans, sweetie, and ditto my story; nay, excuses. I don’t want to sound weak for my shortfall in not having taken you to the altar. But like I have pointed earlier, my parents are more culpable than I am for the mess I now savour. When I scampered to Dad the other day to inform him of how we police “x” in school, he had only encouraged me to be more serious. “Oh. That? It’s good for your engineering” he mentioned.

I had promised Dad I would become an engineer—who would build houses, create power lines and invent new technologies for humanity’s comfort but I just couldn’t confront the burning question of how a mastery of those horrible (quadratic) equations and polynomials would help my dreams. I moved along, regardless. I burnt the night candles. I stayed awake in the wee hours. I did excellently in class as I anticipated the future Dad spoke to me about. I finally got to write my external papers and I came out in flying colours. Then, I got promoted to the varsity. I sighed, finally, to jubilate my championship. I thought the sweats would dry by then and hunger would go away. But I was wrong. It was unknown to me I just got served a new 5-year in captivity. Mọ́bíkẹ, I persevered yet again for I had little or no choice.

At the University, it was an all-day all-night-round affair. There was no mom around to even pester me to read. Neither was Dad available to remind me of how to deal. If I liked, I could be out all night to party, it was to my own peril. If I decided to stay back and pay attention to lessons, it would be to my success. Mọ́bíkẹ, I toiled. My love, I laboured. What kept me moving was however the assurance Dad gave to me; in a rosy future, about a life in “Eldorado”, should I come out in flying colours. My teachers, nay, my lecturers, almost stood as impediments to my progress but I outshone them all. I came out clean and earned a fair grade.

But disappointingly, Mọ́bíkẹ, I had gotten no patronage of my worth since I left the college. I had gotten no value for the mouthwatering credentials I hold. Every organization I have offered to work would scorn me; reject and deject me. I would be thrown back into the streets so I could commence a fresh hustle. I wake up every day without a scintilla of hope in securing the next meal. Darling, my parents on whose plea and bill, on whose toil and sweat, on whose struggle and dignity I was educated are gradually loosing hope in me, their sumptuous investment. I could hardly cater for them as they become aged. I would attend seminars and gather more certificates, but all these had bear no fruitful consequence. Mọ́bíkẹ! I’m sorry!

I know I have failed you. I sleep every night with the thought of you but how to pick you up the next day so we could journey our dreamland had remained only a dream. I would be told to begin a trade. Some other time, I would be encouraged to harness a skill different from all that I have learnt in school. It is by then I would be more convinced about the futile years I have spent outside of home. Why have I been to school if doing so would not rescue me from impoverishment? Why have I undergone all the troubles, spending a third of my lifespan on something unyielding? Mọ́bíkẹ, why should I have gone through school if it won’t fetch me your little bride price? I sob, my dear. I weep even for generations unborn in my clime. I still harbour hope in the future we both share. Whatever it takes, my Love, I shall come for you. I remain your everyday crush,

THE NIGERIAN GRADUATE.

Hussein Adegoke, 26, is a graduate of civil engineering since 2017. He wrote in from Offa, his hometown in Kwara State. Email: husseinadegoke18@gmail.com. Phone: 08168232608