The Return: A Search for a Living Memory

I've been struggling with this decision for most of my time in Jos, but by nature of the fact that I just got the visa, I think I've resolved it: I'm going back to Niger.

I figure, why not? It's only a two-day trip on tortuous roads through the heat and dust of Northern Nigeria and that half-remembered road from Niamey to Zinder. After all, when will I honestly next get the chance to be a mere 1,271km road trip from the home that built me up, pulled me down, and, every day for two solid years, fundamentally changed the person I was and the person I was to be.

It's impossible to describe the emotion that goes into this decision. It's something I've been grappling seriously with for the last two weeks now. As this idea took shape and began to materialize, I realized that it isn't all Tuareg tea and starry nights. If I'm expecting life to have frozen there in my time away, I'll be sorely disappointed. The children will have grown, there will have been births, deaths, marriages, all the events of life that ground us and give us structure. And I'll have missed many of those.

In fact, I have no idea what has happened in the village in the nearly two years I've been away. I lost my Nigerien SIM card while I was traveling in West Africa. With that small piece of plastic and electronics, I lost my only living connection to my village. Every phone number I collected in Niger is now lost in some forgotten corner of Africa.

I remember meeting a young woman in Sierra Leone. She was set to leave the country and was a bit heartbroken by that fact. We commiserated over leaving a place that felt like home, and I mentioned how much I wanted to return to Niger. "Don't," she said, "I know how much you want something like that right now, but you can't ever go back. What is there for you? Things change."

In every way, she's right, and that's the biggest fear I hold. Two years is a long time in a country where the average life expectancy is 53, where 16% of children don't make to to the age of 5, where, as a woman, you have a 1 in 16 chance of dying during childbirth over the course of a lifetime that averages 7.6 children per woman. In my mind, I imagine this place held in time, where I'll step out of a bush taxi and have a horde of screaming children welcoming me back to village. In reality, there's every possibility that a few of those children will no longer be there to greet me. There's every possibility that the old men who spent their days napping in the shade of the neem trees will be fewer in number. There's every possibility that sometime during one of those hot, black nights of the past two years, someone I cared about has slipped into a malarial fever from which they couldn't recover.

And what can I do about that? Can I mourn time lost in a place I once called home? Or can I return and find a place that has continued on without me and be thankful that I was allowed such a profound experience? One that can never be shared, no matter how many words are spoken or how many photos were taken. Can I grow and plant this piece of myself, permanently locate it within my heart, and continue on, carrying this shard of experience with me, knowing that there is a piece of myself somewhere that continues to live, to grow, to flourish in the harsh, near-desert of the Sahel?

That is ultimately what has brought me to undertake this journey back to Niger. I don't know if I'd ever get the chance to do it again. Despite all the promises and assurances, I've met too many people who never got around to that great passion, experience, or dream that slowly faded into the soft pain of regret and a wistful nostalgia of a previous life.

If for no other reason, I want to go back in the hopes of seeing this kid again:



That's my attakurmizo, my little trickster, the kid who saw me through the trauma of leaving, who taught me more about love and friendship than I ever could have imagined, who did that all without being able to even properly say my name. That picture is the perfect representation of him. Whenever I think about him, that's how I see him, arms wrapped around my leg, wide-eyed affection without a trace of guile. I could keep him like this forever, like a glass ornament, precious and beautiful. But I want to see what he's become. As much as possible, I yearn for the living memory of this place, even if it has a few cracks and scratches. That's what this ultimately is about: the search for that living memory, even if it's painful or broken in some way. Tomorrow, I'll start that search, unsure of what I'll find but longing for it nevertheless.