They Will Say We Crossed the Waters

The week Renike decided to break up with her boyfriend was the week he called her, his voice quivering as he told her his best-friend just got killed.

“They just shot Foster, babe! The fucking police! They shot him in front of his son—because of a bribe. Because of one fucking thousand naira! I’m done with this shithole, I swear to God!”

Denrele had always been a strong, tough guy. The kind to chest in pain with a grunt. Denrele would stub his toe against a glass, and all Renike would see were clenched lips as he carried on like nothing had happened. That same Denrele was now bawling on the phone somewhere along Osborne Road.

“I never even got to see him. We were meant to see each other this evening.’’

As she comforted him, trying to sniff back the tears forming in her own eyes, she pondered on how broken he must have felt losing his best friend, who had just returned to the country after being away in Australia for so long.

If death wasn’t involved, she would have asked him why it took him this long to realize his country has gotten to the dogs. She had mentally checked out of Nigeria the night she and her friends watched the #EndSARS livestream in 2020. Bodies dropping as bullets were pumped into them by military men, the same military meant to protect them. She watched as the peaceful green-white-green flag was smeared with splatters of violent red. As she scrolled through Twitter with misty eyes, she realized it could have been her. She had only left the protest that evening because her body fought her from inside; menstrual cramps had left her so disoriented she was doubled over in pain. Denrele, whom she had just started dating at the time was in Ghana for work, had reached out to a friend to drive her home. She had made feeble protests but eventually had to leave because her hands had started shaking from the intense pain. Her determination to stay till morning had stemmed from the belief that protesters waving the Nigerian flag were safe. How utterly wrong they were.

Renike had tried convincing Denrele they need to start processing their Japa plans the very next week after the incident, but Denrele, in his typical Mr. Common Sense manner, waved it aside, blaming her reaction on emotions and trauma. He had always been a firm believer that no place would treat you like your country. He said he couldn’t imagine leaving behind the comfort he had to become a second-class citizen somewhere else. He cheekily added, “Abi you think I’d be able to afford a chef and a driver over there?”

She had told him that was neither here nor there, considering he was a cybersecurity expert. He had laughed heartily before saying, “Dey play.” Still, she persevered. When she mentioned trying to sit for IELTS, he had laughed.

“Imagine, they’re even telling you to prove you can speak English. You studied English Language, for God’s sake, babe!”

Renike passed the IELTS. When she told him she had gained admission into a fully funded program at the University of Iowa, Denrele was bemused.

“You were actually serious?” he seemed to say.

They had a row, an argument that lasted for weeks before he finally succumbed. Then, they had a long and serious talk about what it meant for their relationship. He had proposed they get married right away.

“Will you be joining me anytime soon?” she asked.

He scratched his head.

Renike added, “Then no, I’m not marrying you.”

“I don’t know why you need to Japa. You work as a senior marketing lead.”

“Denrele! Nigeria would have killed me. Isn’t it better for me to go to a saner country where I know the system works?”

“A saner country with their gun issues and racism?”

“I would take that over federal gaslighting! Imagine the government saying no one was killed at the toll gate and it was all AI!” she retorted, irritated that he could even trivialize the issues she was raising.

Denrele’s temple twitched as it often did when he was trying to steady himself. He took a deep breath and said, “I can always come visit. It makes no sense letting things end because you’re choosing to betray your country for—”

Renike didn’t wait for him to finish. She picked up her bag and left his house. She marched angrily to her car and was already turning onto the road when she realized she had left her package from Teeka behind. But even that didn’t make her return. She was so angry she was unfazed about having to order another set of skincare products. She wouldn’t be returning to Denrele’s house anytime soon.

He had called, and she ignored him. He texted, and she left him on read. He showed up at her estate and called her with a strange number to ask for the gate code. She grudgingly told him.

“Love.”

“Is that so? Wow, what a coincidence.”

He had shown up with her Teeka package and packs of Bounty chocolates as a peace offering. Then, they had talked it out before eventually ending up tangled in each other’s arms.

---

Denrele kept to his word. He consistently flew to see her every quarter. The expenses didn’t bother him; he could comfortably afford them. She still tried to convince him to relocate the third time he flew over, expressing concerns over the ticket costs, but he wouldn’t budge. He told her she’d soon realize everywhere was the same and come back to him.

“I give you one year, max.”

Sometimes, during their video calls, their conversations strayed to some of their friends scattered across various continents. Renike would again try to make Denrele see reason, and he would abruptly steer the conversation toward “common sense.”

“It just doesn’t make sense to quit a banking job in Nigeria and start washing toilets over there.”

“You should know there’s a certain level of…”

“Imagine my cousin crying to me over the phone about studying and still working six days a week, with only Sundays to rest? What are you looking for?! This is someone whose dad owns three hotels in Ibadan.”

“Denrele…”

“You expect me to pity you because you’re cleaning shit-stained bums and getting smacked around by mentally unstable white people in care homes? Why?!”

“Denrele!”

He stopped talking then. Renike, for the umpteenth time, tried making him see reason until she stopped midway and told him they needed to stop discussing the Japa vs No-Japa debate before it strained their relationship further.

All her friends had already told her to leave him anyway. Even the dilemma she anonymously sent to the I Said What I Said podcast had supported her friends. She remembered how Jola had laughed at her pseudo name Jola’s Bedroom Cobweb before saying, “Anybody telling you to leave the United States, where you’re already putting your life on track, and come back here is your enemy o. He has decided to be a patriotic citizen to his fatherland that is the weapon fashioned against him. It’s really jarring that someone you call your boyfriend keeps trying to dismiss your concerns! My sister, better run.”

FK, on the other end, had hmmmed before saying, “At the end of the day, these people will still end up doing what they want to do. That’s when the self-inflicted clownery comes out in force.”

“True sha, you people are very annoying, honestly,” Jola had responded.

And in true fashion, she had actually stayed. And now, she felt like the self-inflicted clownery was coming back to bite her painfully in the ass.

She just couldn’t fathom the signs she had missed to be three years deep into a relationship with someone whose beliefs on an important issue like this conflicted so deeply with hers.

Then she started being passive-aggressive. Anytime Denrele pissed her off, she wouldn’t accept his video call requests, even though they would still speak normally. And when she eventually picked up, it was often when she was at work, where she wouldn’t have to “lower the camera.”

And so began the cycle of toxicity in their relationship—until the week Renike made up her mind to end things for good. Only for Denrele to get confronted with the brutal reality that nothing was enough to cushion anyone from a government hell-bent on self-destruction. Foster, his childhood friend, had eventually visited Nigeria ten years after relocating, just to see his aged parents. His wife, an Australian, had told him she couldn’t wait to meet Denrele in person. She effusively talked about how her husband was so fond of Denrele that they had given their son Denrele’s name as his middle name. Foster was shot point blank by a trigger-happy policeman because he didn’t have 1,000 naira on him. His wife had called Denrele, barely 5 hours after their arrival, screaming over the phone, unable to make a coherent statement, as their son wailed in the background.

Foster was ignored by passersby in cars because they were afraid of getting roped into what wasn’t their problem by the same Nigerian police. Ambulance lines weren’t going through. The one they eventually got hissed at them, saying the caller was shouting too much into her ears, and promptly dropped the call. When they finally managed to get Foster to a hospital, the hospital rejected him, stating they would receive a query from the Nigerian police for treating a gunshot victim. Denrele had raged until the hospital finally wheeled his friend into the emergency ward—but it was already too late.

In a mocking twist of fate, Denrele’s reality got even harsher. It was as if fate knew he had changed his mind. Their conversations became increasingly tinted with discussions about Nigeria and how bad things were getting.

“Babe, can you imagine? There’s been a hike in data prices!”

“Babe, can you imagine? There’s fuel scarcity!”

“Babe, can you imagine? I went to Ebeano today, and the Greek yoghurt I always stock up on has tripled in price!”

All Renike could do was coo words of encouragement instead of blurting out the “I told you so” that hovered on her tongue.

Then came the visa process. When his visa got denied, he spent days being moody during their conversations. Then he sent her frantic VNs on WhatsApp one day, hyperventilating as he told her he had narrowly escaped being shot by some policemen who had tagged him a Yahoo boy because of his cornrows. Renike excused herself from class to call him.

“I had to give them 200k so they wouldn’t take me to the station. Bayo said if I followed them, they might kill me the same way they killed Foster.”

“Are you almost home?”

“Yeah. I just turned into my street. Mehn, I’m done with this place for real—my work ID was on my neck! Do you know how crazy that is?” He sounded scared.

Renike told him to inhale deeply and exhale five times before the call ended. The breathing exercises had begun since Foster’s death due to the psychological distress it caused Denrele.

Renike assured him she would constantly put him in her prayers so his visa would get approved the next time he reapplied. When it finally got approved, they spent most of their time picturing their new life together. Denrele was mostly mute during the conversation, and when he spoke, he talked about how he probably wouldn’t see the rest of his friends for years and how he’d end up being “that uncle that lives in America.”

“You can always visit yearly,” she had chipped in.

“Never!”

Still, Denrele mourned being ripped away from his remaining family and friends by the unfortunate hands of his country. The end of his monthly Sunday brunches. The end of boys’ nights at Ebar every Friday. The end of what was familiar and felt like home. The end of “Oga, find something for the boys” from the estate security—something that always felt good, even though he constantly complained about it to Renike.

Who would call him “Oga” in America?