NEJI YILPET | STAFF WRITER
The phone kept ringing—no response. On the fifth try, I almost stopped.
In my head over and over, I said ‘Please, I need to hear his voice. Jesus, please”.
I lost track of how many times I redialed the number. Finally, a groggily voice met me on the other end of the line.
“Hello? Hello?” my brother answered, partly asleep.
“It is me, Nenji. Can you hear me? Baby, I heard people were killed today. Are you okay?” I anxiously asked.
“Yeah, it was bad, but we are okay…” he responded. He was barely coherent, so our conversation was brief.
For that moment, I received what I needed—confirmation of my family’s safety. Still, I could not focus on studying for my mid-terms and completing my papers.
It was Sunday evening, March 7th. While I sat in Azusa, halfway across the world, in Jos, Nigeria, the wailing of my people shook the city.
Let me explain. I am a bi-cultural black woman who juggles two worlds. I am African American and Nigeria. I was raised in the Midwest for ten years and then in Nigeria for eight. For eight years, I called Jos, Nigeria home. I came back to the U.S. for college four years ago—while my parents and younger brother have remained overseas. Jos—the city I lived in—was always known for peace and tourism.
In 2001, that changed. I lived through violence and bloodshed. Refuges filled my house as a religious and ethnic crisis broke out. I still see the mosques and churches blazing, as soldiers in tankers roamed the streets. Thousands dead. Thousands displaced. Thousands traumatized. Jos has not recovered and in recent years the violence has returned.
But what happened Sunday was unimaginable—a massacre. Just south of where my family lives, 400 men, women and children were slaughtered and killed by a rival group. They had no way to defend themselves as they were woken to gunshots that signaled the ending of their lives. A four month old baby body was found in the road.
I write of about because this is my story. I live between two realities. Oh, Nigeria is not typically a violent place. In Nigeria, I found life in its fullest. Yet, I equally embrace being from here too—both places are mine.
In moments like this—when people wake up to bloodshed—the disparity between the two worlds seems so much larger than the Atlantic that divides them. I cannot reconcile sitting here dreaming and planning for post-graduation, while my brother tells me he maybe desensitized to the loss of human life.
How do I sit in a class and learn about grant writing, while knowing that my city is mass burying women and children? How do I stand in chapel and sing “My God is mighty to save”, when weeping is the present song of my people?
Rarely, do we truly realize that around the world—shoot, around the corner—people live lives with such contrasting realities to ours. Somewhere else, at this very moment, people are celebrating, mourning, dancing, sleeping—in different languages and cultures.
We see the world from our cultural framework. We prioritize our lives based on the shape, color and size of our lenses. In this moment, I am a student getting a higher education. I do the social life, the academics, the work life—and the busyness of it all makes it seem like this is all there is for this moment.
But then, I see the pictures and video of the massacre and I shake.Mid-terms are irrelevant. Papers pointless. All I think of now is sorrow and hope. Where is the hope? This question has rung through my head all week. I may be across the Atlantic, but my soul sits at the burial with the four month old baby’s body.
As I said, I juggle to worlds—but even more so, what I have been reminded of this week is that our lives are inextricably interlinked. Be it what happens in Haiti, Chile, Nigeria, India, Mexico, South Los Angeles, Azusa—as humans we are all directly or indirectly linked.
Cleric and activist, Desmond Tutu, said “my humanity is bound up in your humanity, for we can only be human together”—and this week I was reminded of that. I cannot sit here in the privilege of higher education and not also feel the anguish caused by a massacre.