loneliness | Zikoko!

The Nigerian experience is physical, emotional, and sometimes international. No one knows it better than our features on #TheAbroadLife, a series where we detail and explore Nigerian experiences while living abroad.

Amina (26) had a soft landing in Canada, but nothing prepared her for the seasonal depression and loneliness in her new country. In this edition of Abroad Life, she shares how much she has grown since her move, but still feels like something important is missing.

Where do you live, and when did you relocate from Nigeria?

I live in Canada and I moved in April 2022.

What has the last three years in Canada looked like for you?

I had a soft landing. I was fortunate to stay with my sister for over two years. I only recently moved into my apartment, so I haven’t bothered about paying bills since I moved to Canada, and I am forever grateful for that. My brother did not have the same experience because he moved to Canada before us ( my sister and I); he was on his own, and that was tough.

But even though I’ve had it easy so far, there are things that I’m still trying to figure out.

Like what?

Building a physical community has been hard, and I’m still struggling with it. But I have a great online community on Twitter that has is now bigger than I and my friend imagined when we started it.

I’m grateful that we have that community, but I wish I had a stronger physical community. I know a lot of people in my province, but I am not friends with them. I had a solid group of friends back in Nigeria, and unfortunately, japa happened. Some of them are now in Canada, but we are not in the same province. We typically have to plan and travel for hours before seeing each other.

Sounds tough. How hard is it to maintain those friendships?

We are still strong as ever. I always find time for my friends, whether they are in Nigeria or anywhere else in the world. Moving abroad actually made me feel closer to my friends, because I always need someone to talk to about what’s going on in my life. I don’t have physical friends, so I won’t abandon the people who have been there for me because I’ve moved to a new location.

I always find a way to talk to my friends and not miss birthdays. We also bond through movies. If I’m watching something new, I’ll drop a message saying, “Oh, you should see this movie”. My friends are also amazing people who understand that I feel lonely here sometimes. Most of us have been friends for up to 10 years, and there’s no way we’re giving up on each other.

You’ve hacked long-distance friendship. How do you stay connected to your family members in Nigeria?

My parents are late, and I’m here with all my siblings, so the only family I have left in Nigeria are aunts and uncles.

Sorry about your parents.

Thank you. I’m still in contact with my extended family. Thankfully, the relationship thrives on mutual respect—typically when you move here, some people start looking at you like a breadwinner but my family members still see me as a baby. They don’t ask me for anything, but I still try my best to send whatever I can home, especially because of how bad the economy is now.

Why do you think you’re still struggling to find physical friends?

I have friends, but they are not in my province. Funny enough, I have friends in almost every province in Canada, but this country is lonely, whether you have friends or not. Everyone is working hard because time is money here. Your friends will likely run between shifts even if you have time to hang out. Plus, the country is so big that you can spend two hours driving between two provinces. Last summer, I was in Ontario to visit friends and family, and it was a long drive away from my province. I visited other family members and drove for two hours to another province. Sometimes, it is unlucky because the people I know are not in the same city as me, and seeing them means driving for hours. The only good thing is that road trips are safe in Canada, so you can always decide to hit the road, as long as you are prepared.

Nice! What’s the best part about living in Canada?

My career growth has been insane. When I think of where I am right now, I doubt that it would have been possible if I were still living in Nigeria. It wasn’t easy to get here. I was jobless for six months when I first moved to Canada. My sister gave me the chance to settle in, so I didn’t rush into job hunting. It took three months of actively searching before I got a job here, and it was a customer service role. Two months into the role, I got accepted into a program requiring me to leave the customer service job. It was an eight-week program that came with a six-week internship. After the internship, I was offered full-time permanent employment and worked there for two years. Then I got a new job last month and I’m loving it!

Did you experience any culture shock?

I have lived in Nigeria all my life, and so many things have taken me by surprise. But the biggest surprise was the weather. I’ve experienced three winters now, and all three felt different. I didn’t know there was something called seasonal depression till I got here. It’s hard to do anything during the winter.

On a scale of one to ten, how happy are you in Canada?

Some days, it’s ten and on other days, it’s eight. In Nigeria, I could carry my bag and go to a friend’s house for a few days. But I can’t do that here. I also don’t have access to the food I love to eat, which is Amala. If I could, I’d take a trip back to Nigeria just to eat Amala. On the other hand, I found security here— I’ve gone on amazing trips and seen Asa perform live, so I’m happy.

Do you want to share your Abroad Life story? Please reach out to me here. For new episodes of Abroad Life, check in every Friday at 12 PM (WAT).

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It’s a tough period for Nigerians in the diaspora. It’s colder than your motherland, and all your friends are in their homes with family. If you’re lucky, your own family is with you. How can you survive this period without losing your mind?

We have tips.

Enter someone else’s relationship

There’s a solution for everything if you’re desperate enough. Enter a relationship that doesn’t belong to you, whether with permission or by force. They think they can wear matching pyjamas and snuggle together? Show them that Naija no dey carry last.

Buy plenty mirrors

The mind isn’t as smart as we make it to be. That’s why there are things called illusions and magic. Surround your room with mirrors so when you enter, it seems like you’re in a place full of people just like you. Abi, don’t you like yourself 🙃?

Do drugs

What else can make you feel like you’re not alone? Once you begin to feel lonely, take something that’ll convince you your family is in the room with you, commenting on your weight and asking when you’ll marry. Just like old times.

Disclaimer: It’s play o. Zikoko does not encourage the use of hard drugs

Join a coven

If you can’t find physical companionship, you can always look towards the spiritual plane. Cold no dey catch winch o. Plus, abroad witches and wizards have brooms to fly. You won’t have to trek or disappear with bad graphic effects.

If witchcraft isn’t your speed, get yourself a spirit husband or wife. We have a full tutorial.

Come back to Nigeria 👀

Come back home. Is it not ordinary flooding, insecurity and inflation? Is that why you want to freeze in a foreign land? Come home, let’s throw banger together joh.

This is not your village people talking.

Sleep a lot

It’s somebody who’s awake that knows there’s nobody for them to play with. Sleep, wake up, eat and go back to bed. It’s just three months of doing this every day. Light work.

Set your goals for next year

It’s always a wonderful thing to spend time lying to yourself about things you want to start, stop and achieve in the next calendar year. Write one goal per day and meditate on it. Before you know it, time has gone, and winter is over.

Gaslight yourself

When you begin to feel lonely, convince yourself it’s because society wants you to feel that way this period. You’re better than being a puppet of society. How’s winter different from other times of the year? Is it not just that snow is falling? Why should that make you lonely?

Esohe* grew up in a large polygamous family of over 50 members. Then she moved out, got married and now has one child. Now, she’s incredibly lonely and misses the bustle of her noisy childhood

This is Esohe’s* story, as told to Itohan.

When people say they had a large family, they usually mean having ten to eleven siblings. Mine was larger. My father had three wives. The first had six children, the second had five children, and the third had eleven. Four out of those children died and my father was left with 18 biological children.

When my uncle died, my father took up the responsibility of raising his eight children. My father’s cousin was also unable to take care of his children, so that means we got an extra six children in the house. If you add the young boys my father was also raising for reasons I do not know, there were enough children to start a football league. When people ask what my position is in the family, I don’t give them an answer because I don’t know. There were more children than I could keep track of.

Growing up with so many people in the house meant there was never a dull moment. There was always someone to play with, cause mischief with, and blame what you did on. We also hardly ever fought. Occasionally, one child would bully another, but for the most part, we got along just fine. Even the wives learnt to get along.

My grandmother, the matriarch of the household, ran a very tight ship. If any of the wives fought, they weren’t allowed to cook food for themselves or their husband. My grandmother believed that if the wives fought, they’d start thinking of ways to kill each other, and she didn’t want to risk anyone poisoning her son. If the wives didn’t cook for their husbands, they too wouldn’t eat. In the village, if you didn’t cook for your husband, you weren’t allowed to put on your fire. Why would you be cooking when your husband wasn’t going to eat from the food? The women would be stuck with only garri and coconut or whatever else they could find. Not only would they not cook, but they’d also have to pay a fine of two fowls or one goat. That was enough to keep everyone on their best behaviour.

The children regularly got into a lot of mischief. Everyone feared us in the community because if anyone harassed any one of us, it meant they’d declared war against our entire household, and we’d storm their houses demanding our pound of flesh. As scared as they were of us, they also loved us very much because of my father. During festivities like Christmas and church harvests, he opened up his home to everyone so they could eat and drink to their fill.

The house would be busy with children trying to prepare and guests dancing to music and laughing over good food. My father used to save money from the beginning of the year so he could buy the biggest goat during the church harvest in November. When he paid for it, the church youths would carry the goat to our house while the rest of us sang and danced along.

However, as we grew up and children left the family house, the bustle of the activities reduced and the house gradually grew quieter. When I was eleven, I also left to go live with one of my half-sisters in Benin city. I missed home but it was bearable. Her family was way smaller than mine but between going to school and helping her raise her two children, I was occupied enough.

I finished secondary school at seventeen and moved in with an older brother and his three children in Lagos. Because some of my other siblings also lived with my brother, I was back to being in a house with more than ten people. The problem with having so many people in one house in a city like Lagos is that things never went round — food was never enough, for example. That’s why I decided that when I got married, I’d have just two or three children. Enough people to keep me company, but not so much that they’d have to struggle for food and clothes.

The older I got, the more I fell out of touch with my family members. Some were starting families of their own, had travelled to different continents, gotten new jobs, and no longer had time for each other. We tried to keep in touch, but life becomes different when you’re an adult.

It took a while for me to get married and an even longer time to have a child. I felt incredibly lonely. My husband was the primary breadwinner, and I had two small businesses I was doing to keep busy. He’d go out early in the morning and return late at night. With work going on, I tried to focus on my work but I knew something was missing.

I didn’t have any friends — at least not the kind that was close enough to talk to constantly. The way I was brought up in such a large family, I hardly spoke to anyone that wasn’t a family member. My husband also wasn’t someone that kept friends, so I didn’t want to be the wife that constantly brought people he didn’t know to the house. The few friends I had were people I knew from church, and I spoke to them only when I was in church.

The first Christmas after my wedding, I started my own traditions by decorating the house and inviting guests over. But when the party was over and the last of the guests left, it would be just me and my husband. The house was awfully quiet.

By the second Christmas, I hadn’t given birth but I still tried to celebrate. I decorated my house and called over some guests, but after they left, I felt lonely again. The problem with the holidays was there was no work to keep me busy. I was left alone with my thoughts. I tried to talk to my husband about it, but he’s the kind of person that likes to be by himself. He’s the first son and has always been independent. He didn’t relate to how I felt.

The third Christmas came, and I couldn’t bring myself to go through another party. Having to decorate and deal with the quiet when everyone left would have been too much for me. Instead, I got involved in church activities. Navigating church, work and spending time with my husband might mean I didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on the loneliness.

I threw myself into overseeing my business and when that got boring, I went to church. I’d close from work sometimes around 5 p.m. and go to church by 6 p.m for a service that’d last till 8 p.m. anything to keep loneliness at bay. By the time I was done with church, I’d be home by 9 p.m, too tired to think about anything. I was stressed from so much activity and my blood pressure went up. g My husband complained and encouraged me to take it easy, but I didn’t stop. Work and church were my distractions from loneliness.

In 2001, and at the age of 38, I finally had my first and only child. Finally, there was light in my life again. Having her in my life made me feel less lonely and gave me purpose. I would dress her up in pretty dresses and take pictures of her. I even started our own Christmas tradition of giving gifts on the 26th of December. I resumed decorating and inviting people over because the holidays no longer caused me pain. My business wasn’t doing as well anymore, so I was now a stay-at-home wife and mother.

When she started school at two, I couldn’t stay away from her because I missed her so much. I’d take her to school and drop her off, sometimes sticking around the school compound to watch her interact with the other children. There wasn’t much for me to do elsewhere anyway.

When she went off to boarding school at nine, I visited her almost every week. My husband had started working in another state at the time, and I barely saw him, my loneliness quadrupled. I desperately needed someone to talk to. I’d also spend more time at church, because what else was there to do? When I wasn’t visiting my daughter or at church, I’d attend to some menial tasks and run errands just to distract myself.

I saw my child for only three months out of the year and I relished those moments. She would tell me stories about her friends; she even introduced them to me. She’d sleep in my bed and we’d talk about our day and pray together. She told me I was her best friend. Unfortunately, children grow up and need their space, so they stop talking to their parents as much.

When she went away to university at the age of seventeen, her school was over 300km away by road because it was in another state. I could no longer show up as much as I wanted. I even contemplated getting a masters degree in her school just so I could be near her. To make matters worse, she hardly called me. Sometimes, I’d cry myself to sleep because I hadn’t heard from her in days, and I wondered if she was okay. When she did eventually call to say a rushed, “I’m doing okay,” it was like a knife to my ears. I couldn’t tell her about it, and my husband didn’t understand how I felt because he was too busy with work. Most of the time, it was just me alone at night with my thoughts.

After two years of enduring this treatment, I finally spoke to her about how her silence made me feel. She promised to do better, and she is trying but not the way I’d like her to. My daughter is too comfortable going days without talking to me or anyone else for that matter. She’s a worse version of my husband. At least, he calls me every day even when he’s not around. It’s just that we still don’t live in the same state, so I hardly see or touch him.

My daughter is about to finish school now, and I’m hoping she gets married. Marriage means in-laws I could probably spend time with and grandchildren, right? Life gets boring and lonely. I’m grateful for the family I have, but I wish I had a bigger family.