i do not come to you by chance by adaobi tricia nwaubani

I look to Nigerian writers actually stationed in Nigeria to sate my hunger for a real literary taste of home. This deficit is from prolonged absence by the writer’s muse from the scene of the crime (Nigeria). Most books about Nigeria written by Nigerians abroad tend to suffer the indignity of loss. Prolonged exile burdens the memory to the point of vital literary loss and no amount of poetic license can stem this loss. And if they really want to open the iroko doors to my rugged heart, they come bearing books written by Nigerians in Nigeria and published in Nigeria. Visiting relatives and friends from Nigeria know now not to knock on my door without the requisite offerings – Open Sesame to my hearth and my heart – bottles of groundnuts, fresh ground ogbono, egusi, snails the size of an elephant’s ears, etc. It is not the same, but it is better than nothing.Įvery now and then the exile gets a reprieve from the purgatory of dislocation – in the form of an authentic treat – straight from home. There are “African markets” that sell stale desiccated and preserved replicas of what one misses the most about home. If you no longer know how to tie your gele head-tie, there are shops that will do the honors for you – for a modest fee of course. There is a multibillion dollar industry out here in America devoted to soothing our collective angst. And it is not for lack of trying exiles go through a million hoops to replicate the bread of their childhood.

Nothing tastes, smells, looks the same and everywhere you go you hear voices of impish vendors selling fake reminders of home because there is money in selling the weary traveler a mirage. It is the assault or the rebellion of your senses that hurts the most.

I guess it makes sense, this disconcerting feeling of constantly being out-of-sorts, like a gentle but persistent hangover. And all your senses rebel to the death against the changes that you need to embrace in order to enjoy, well, purgatory. Nothing is quite right one feels neither here nor there, trapped in a dispensation that is not quite alien, not quite home. Exile is a fitting metaphor for alienation.

I do not come to you by chance by adaobi tricia nwaubani