My family is from the Boki tribe but lives in Calabar, a centre city compared to the more traditional Boki villages where many of my tribesmen and relatives reside.
Unlike many other Nigerian ethnicities, the Boki has a predominantly oral history, hardly documented, mostly passed on by folklore. My most memorable one was about a palm wine tapper who produced the most mysteriously delicious palm wine.
“My grandfather described the deft motion of his nimble limbs as he tapped away – a technique others would attempt to copy but never quite successfully.”
The moral of the story was that some things about us are just too unique to be replicated, and I remember my grandfather saying this in the loving way in which he did everything.
You should also know that the indulgent grandparent figure is a common thread in Boki families. They influence how you are named, pray over you, and squeeze envelopes into your hands at Christmas.
“I grew up knowing that a visit to my grandparents meant a proper holiday.”
In close-knit communities like ours, joy and sorrow are shared experiences. My mum says that when I was born, the Boki women in our city visited our home, necks dusted with sweet-scented baby powder.
They brushed against my cheek and cooed over me in rapid-fire Bokyi just as hurriedly as they set all the bowls of pepper soup and afang down. They danced all Sunday, occasionally pausing to tie their checkered double wrappers or down some beer.
When my littlest brother was born, there was reportedly even more fanfare and my Dad respecting tradition, had to publicly present his wife with a gift as appreciation for her journey through childbirth.
Conversely, death calls for the loud presence of family, albeit under a heavier shadow. The news tends to travel fast and tears echo all around the family house. You never have to ask ‘how’ because the information is often volunteered or you can simply pick the details up from discussions.
There will be family meetings, garden eggs & groundnut butter, and a flurry of activity as relatives gather to show their support.
“There will be shared responsibilities from the casket to the décor to the food. There might be an awakening of age-old traditions, depending on the person’s standing or chieftaincy.”
Finally, after the burial, a “washing of hands” ceremony brings a semblance of closure as an intimate gathering of the family left behind meets to figure out their new reality.
Events aside, the farther away from home I go, the more I realize that time has put a longing for shared safe spaces with this kind of shared identity into me. I realize that I have always pined for that version of home that feels like the tender embrace of the people and places I originate from.
“Boki, where everyone playfully non-playfully teases my best attempts at responding in our language and corrects my intonation, while offering me the most decorated plate of plantain porridge as if to say: ‘you belong here.”
Calabar, the city with the one neighborhood I have consistently known, the routes I can trace in my sleep, the one bakery I wish I could buy out, and the one law firm I interned at every summer for 3 years.
I have found that to be a young person is to be constantly shifting — with seasons, with work, with friendship, with the siren song of purpose. Those of us who can’t sit still will find that restlessness is how our world has erupted in varied languages, and cultures and dreams.
We will find that our yearning for home has caused us to find it in new spaces, and the things that make us feel most isolated in the moment are the things that connect us directly to our human community.
I, for one, have been blessed to build new pockets of home repeatedly in the long stretches of time I have spent away from my immediate family. In Lagos, with its frenetic energy, with the Ayavgas, with my Storehouse community, and with my friends. The future may be uncertain, but the journey of finding a home, in all its iterations, is a thrilling adventure I cannot wait to continue.
