We Just Have to Find It. Why Not Us?

To whom it may concern,

I am writing this letter because I do not know who else to tell. Maybe it is you, the stranger reading it. Maybe it is the man I will be in ten years. Maybe it is nobody at all. But I have carried these words quietly for a long time, and tonight they are too heavy to carry alone.

So let me put them down here. Let me start where it all began.

I was a small boy in Èrúwà, in Oyo State, going to the primary school close to home. It was the school we could afford. I did not know then that a school could be a dream or a burden. To me, it was just where I went in the morning.

At night I slept on a mat, right at the foot of my parents’ bed. One night, half asleep, I heard them talking in low voices. My mother wanted us to move to a better school in the city.

My father asked the question that fathers like him ask in the dark: “How will we get the money?”

My mother did not wait long. “We just have to find it,” she said. “I just want my kids to also go to the best school. If Fasila (who is a single mother) can send her kids to the same best school, why not us?”

I lay very still on that mat. I was afraid that if I moved, they would know I was awake. I was too young to understand money, but I understood one thing that night. My future was going to cost something my parents did not have. And they had decided to pay it anyway.

After that night, I started to notice the Milo tin.

It was an old tin, the kind that once held the chocolate drink we could rarely afford. Every day, I watched my parents drop money into it. A few coins. A folded note. Whatever was left after the day was done. Nobody sat me down to teach me about saving. I learnt it by watching that tin slowly get heavier.

Later, I learnt something else. The tin was never enough. My father took loans to pay our school fees. He borrowed so that we could sit in classrooms he never sat in himself. He carried that debt quietly, the way fathers carry most things.

Today I am a grown man, far from Èrúwà, studying in the United Kingdom. And still, every step of my education has been paid for with loans. The Milo tin has simply grown bigger.

A few days ago, someone questioned why I depend so heavily on loans. I was told that, in reality, it might be better to withdraw and go back home with my peace and dignity. I know it may have been meant kindly. But those words stayed with me long after the meeting ended, and I have not been able to shake them off.

I keep asking myself: does dignity only belong to those who can afford to stay? People from backgrounds like mine are already given a hundred reasons to fail. Why not us, for once, to succeed?

Here is what I could not say to them in that moment. It is not the loans that frighten me. Loans are a risk I understand. I was raised inside that risk, sleeping at the foot of it every night. I can carry debt.

What I cannot carry is failure.

I came from nothing. I have seen how quickly the shame arrives when you fall. The people who clapped for you go quiet. The questions turn into whispers. The whispers turn into “I told you so.” When you come from where I come from, you are not only failing for yourself. You are failing for the mat, for the Milo tin, for every loan your father signed, and for every night your mother said, “We just have to find it.”

So this letter is me being honest. I am TIRED.

Many nights the weight sits on my chest and will not move. In the day I smile, I go to work, I answer emails, I read my papers, and I say, “I’m fine.” But inside, I am still that little boy on the mat, lying very still, listening in the dark, afraid that if I move, the dream will break.

I am not writing to ask for money. I am writing to ask for strength. I need someone to tell me that the road I am on is worth it. I need someone to remind me that a man is not his debt and that slowing down is not the same as giving up.
If you have walked this road before me, please tell me how you kept going. If you are walking it now beside me, please know that you are not alone. Some of us are carrying whole generations on our backs and smiling so nobody notices.

And yet, I am still hopeful.

Fola, a Nigerian Afropop artist, has a new song that I keep playing. “…how many times have I fallen, and I got back up like who knows?… Only God knows!” Every time I hear it, I think of my parents. My mother found money that did not exist. My father signed for loans he was not sure he could repay. They fell many times. They got back up every time. I am the proof.

I have fallen too. I will probably fall again. But I was raised by people who did not know how to stay down, and I think some of that is in my blood.

So, to whom it may concern: I am still here. Tired, yes. Afraid, many times. But still standing, and still going. The boy on the mat heard his mother say, “We just have to find it.” I am still finding it, Mama. I have not stopped.

Yours sincerely,
A boy from Èrúwà who is still on his way…