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This Is Us
On Teaching Your Body How to Find Home in a New City
Our bodies know when we’ve arrived somewhere new
The first thing I felt was the heat.
Suitcase in my right hand, I stepped out of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport only to be met by an angry sun intent on singeing my skin with licks of heat my body was completely unprepared for. It is by no means cold in my Lagos (yes Lagos is mine, at least it feels like it); our heat is just of a different kind. It’s wetter, more humid, more accommodating. It feels more like an overbearing hug as opposed to this one, which felt like a slow strangling. I already missed my Lagos.
This place is too quiet for my head that finds an oddly enchanting beauty in cacophony. Here, the roads are smooth; tarred perfectly such that the car that drove us didn’t have to gallop and bounce as we moved. I am used to roads that make you swear under your breath as your body is flung and tossed in the car. Look at that level of dysfunction, finding excitement in potholes and the gbas gbos of horrible roads. Home is home, no matter how home is. Discomfort, after a while, morphs into comfort or at least a dull ache you know to be a friend. Even difficulty becomes familiar enough to feel like ease.
