DIRECTIONLESS- BEGINNING AND QUITTING, BECAUSE WE MOVE

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Directionlessness (Directionless+ness)- Did you know that there are over 70 scrabble words in this 17 letters? Stressed. Less. Torn. Sore. Tossed. Please make a list.

It was stormy, the night we packed to leave. I remember hurriedly shoving my things into a bag, deciding to leave some materials(handouts) on my reading table, taking only one pair of shoe. If you know me, you’d know I hate traveling with a lot of luggage. If I had more money, I’d only be with a passport and one or two clothes.

So it happened that I left with a back pack of clothes, one shoe, and some important devices. I don’t know who told my roommate and I this, but we had this unanimous consensus that we would only be gone for two weeks and then things would return to normal.

Two weeks passed. The world grounded to a halt. The covid-19 figures began to rise. People prayed it would not get into their city(it still did). Fear soared, masks stayed glued to faces, there was an eerie silence in every street. I continued rotating my clothes, wearing my sister's, having fun on social media and hoping to get back to school. I was happy, even, because exams were about to start before we left and I hadn’t regarded it with any sense of urgency.

One month.

Schools began to adapt. Zoom. Google Classroom. Sometimes even WhatsApp. My school? We were fed nothing but silence. While organizations sent out bulk emails telling their members to stay safe, my school said nothing. Perhaps we could all die for all they cared?

This was when I began to get worried. Sure, there was COVID, But our lecturers could send materials through our course rep who would them disseminate it Via WhatsApp, right? I mean, that was the barest minimum. We weren’t requesting for zoom calls and virtual meetings as there are a lot of disadvantaged people in federal universities without constant access to data and electricity. Still, nothing. They said they were on strike.

I tried to focus on writing, literature. During the first few weeks, I couldn’t read. This resolved by the second month. I was lucky to have a sister who practiced my course of study. I followed her to the hospital to learn even amid covid concerns. We were interacting with patients who could very well be Covid-19 positive. To be honest, it made me feel badass.

Time pressed on. I got worried. I began to work out. I stopped. I picked it up again. Stopped. I lost my Duolingo streak and deleted the app. I quit my job after a depressive episode. I tried to read school books and failed woefully. I had loads of rejections from literary publication and I stopped writing. I no longer worked with my sister as she changed workplaces and relocated. I learnt a new skill. Signed up for one or two online courses and abandoned ship.

I had months of lethargy, periods where I did nothing but scroll through social media and fight people who wanted the strike to press on. It was infuriating. Didn’t they feel some sort of way seeing their peers in private schools forging ahead? Did they know employers wouldn’t consider this gap year when setting age limits? Were they aware that there were students like them, stuck in abusive and toxic households with nowhere to go, students who only had school as their reprieve?

My friend let me know that regardless of what people felt, it made no difference. My rage would not make school suddenly reopen. People’s selfish reasons wouldn’t make it reopen either.

Of course there were times when I felt productive. ‘Gingered' to make use of this circuiting endless time. However, I haven’t been quite consistent with anything.

The endsars protest came. We all delved into it with or hearts and souls. For the first time, it seemed something could work in Nigeria. ASUU and FG hurried to renegotiate, to get the ‘youths off the street'. FG couldn’t meet ASUU's demands and the strike continued.

We are like a compendium of grief. We witnessed the Lekki tollgate massacre, as well as that in Mushin and Oyigbo. We are still witnessing the disappearance of journalists and notable people at the peaceful protest. We saw the deployment of thugs by the government to disrupt the protests. The lies, the scheming, the hoarding of Covid palliatives, the inflation of food prices. The assertion by the government that we are most likely practising a dictatorship that has been under the guise of democracy since 1999. Worst of all, we know we are victims of the system. We are still out of school.

I remember seeing a video of hoodlums barging through my school gate. There was a burning tyre at the entrance giving off black smoke. They went in with bricks and sticks, smashed the windows of the security post, all the while chanting what they wanted. I knew this was a culmination of anger. This is what you get when people are oppressed for years. But I remember thinking how markedly obtuse it was. The school gets destroyed, and so? The government whom we are all angry at all have their kids in fancy institutions. Who bears the brunt of this madness, isn’t it the common man? All this sorrow, all this rage, it weighs down on our neck like a tyre before a lynching. What do we do? Where do we turn to?

We follow the path of least resistance. Pick up your phone. Go on Twitter. Laugh. Forget your rent in school is about to expire and your landlord wouldn’t spare an extra day. Forget your textbooks are gathering dust and mildew because it’s been so long, too freaking long to even hope that exams are around the corner.

Find a job, learn a skill. Work like hell. Post things like, “We move!” when in reality, you are still stuck in the same endless cycle day after day.

Gain weight. Follow Chloe Ting. Lose Weight. Gain it back. Pray you can still fit into your uniform when school resumes. When school resumes. When school resumes. When school re…never mind. Just eat what you want. ASUU said the strike may extend into years, didn’t they?

When we were sent out of school, my nephew could only sit and had to be carried everywhere. Now 1 year and some months old, he walks, sings, claps, talks (sometimes in incoherent babbles). He even runs. Do you know how much can happen in 8 months?

Just like my roommate and I had the unspoken hope that school would resume in two weeks, Nigerian undergraduates affected by ASUU all have the collective hope that everything would remedy itself by January 2021. Perhaps it would, perhaps we are all garbed in a clown attire. What does it matter? We move. You ask to where? Maybe the next project, the next chapter of a book, the next pack of biscuit, the next 2k to buy data, the next morning with you still on your bed, in another city, with an aunt, the next post on Twitter, the next ASUU bant. Movement is movement, focused or directionless. Movement.

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Contributor: Erere (UNN)

Edited and Published by Directionless