The whole of last Christmas, you barely stayed online, deliberately delaying your replies to messages. There were no exceptions — not for your mother, your sisters, aunties, cousins, or even your closest friends back home.
When you slowly make your way back online, the message you intend to send is simple:
“So sorry for the late response, I have been quite preoccupied these past few weeks.”
You overlook the long text messages, the graphic-designed Christmas cards that people forwarded from whatever WhatsApp page they got them from. There were well-wishes, as well as the inevitable requests for Christmas gifts. You scroll through all of them — all 62 unread messages — searching for just one that doesn’t require you to send money. Even the message from your local church pastor includes a request for a special Christmas offering.
You put your phone down, overwhelmed by the number of people you have to lie to, and begin to rethink your life all over again. It is days like these that make you wish you had never stepped foot in the white man’s land.
When you try to warn your friends back home, advising them to take their time before traveling abroad, they call you wicked for trying to block their chances. They ask:
“If it’s so bad, why do you still stay there? Why don’t you return home?”
“Return home with nothing? And deal with the stigma of failing to make it abroad?”
You were okay back home, you think to yourself. You had a good job; your career was taking off gradually. Why did you give it all up to come here?
Your college girlfriend broke up with you just before Christmas that year. The main cause of your fights leading up to the breakup was your inability to fund the kind of lifestyle she expected you to afford simply because you were abroad.
“I am still a student,” you interjected.
“But you are working,” she objected.
No amount of explanation was enough. She refused to understand that the money she needed for her hair was your grocery budget for a month. That even though you were working, you needed to save to renew your residence permit and pay off the loans you had taken from friends and uncles to travel abroad. That life up here was not all rosy, and that nobody had ever told you the whole truth about the not-so-pleasant side of living abroad.
You considered begging her to come back, but after scrutinizing the price you would have to pay — including wigs sold at exorbitant prices — you gave up.
Most mornings, when you wake up at dawn, you are met with a slight panic attack, a long moment of silence where you fight off the urge to cry, followed by a very warm bath, which you deem necessary in this cold month of February. You no longer bother to read your messages — the only ones that matter are from your workplace and school page. The sound of a notification gives you anxiety, so you put your phone on an eternal Do Not Disturb.
Your residence permit expires in two months. Every colleague you’ve reached out to pours out their struggles as well. It seems as though you are not the only one going through this crisis, and that realization brings a small sense of relief. As bad as it may be, you are not alone.
You see that your mother has called you six times. The last time you sent her money was two weeks ago — she said it was for medication for her knee. You didn’t complain, even though you thought the amount was too much.
“What could it be this time?” you wonder.
She needs money to buy and sew a branded funeral cloth for her friend’s deceased husband.
“Can’t you wear one of your numerous black and white Kaba and Slit? I’m here struggling to gather enough funds to renew my permit, and you want money for designer fabric that you’ll wear only once? What the hell is wrong with — “
You stop mid-sentence and inhale deeply, anger simmering inside you. Sitting on your bed, you stare at the ceiling until you feel slightly better. You know better than to respond in this rage, no matter how much you want to. You throw your phone onto the desk — at least, that’s what you intended. It falls to the floor instead, and you don’t even bother to pick it up.
“Barima nsu… Barima nsu.”
“Men don’t cry… Men don’t cry.”
But you let them fall.
You let them fall.
