Ekondo- Community Heralding Contentment
The night is warm, despite the heavy downpour from the day before. The sky is starless but somehow giving light in its deep blueness. I am sitting on one of two chairs on a balcony in a short-let apartment in Lekki, watching an empty plot of land with my friend, talking about the emptiness of a city I have lived in all my life. The same emptiness I sometimes feel in myself.
We have been here for over 15 minutes, talking about everything I have been dying to say to someone I know will listen with love in their eyes, ears, and posture. He fits well, has all the things my heart searches for as a confirmation of safety before resting, before unravelling. With him, it is easy for me to talk about the things that bothers me. It is easy to talk about how I feel like I am drowning in my work, how I do not sleep as much as I want to, how I am out of the house by 7:00am and back home earliest by 7:00pm. It is easy to tell him about how my life, so packed with corporate and familial responsibilities and my ever-turbulent emotions, feels removed from my people.
It is easy to tell him about how, for the past few years, it has been difficult for me to engage in conversation with friends and family via text or over the phone. How looking at my screen and jumping from one conversation to another tires me. How when the notification banner pops up on my phone, I somehow convince myself that I will respond once I am done with a task at work, once I get home, once I am well settled, once I am able to put my words together, or once I find the right words to reply with. I never reach this point, where my nervous system feels well enough to accommodate the words and voices of all my beloved. So, the messages accumulate, pile up, and I am scared, reluctant, and unwilling, to dive into them.
He tells me he understands, and that he is grateful for understanding. He talks about the life he lives in a different city up north, how things somehow work so well for him because this city is less noisy and more relaxed. In a way, he is surrounded by peace and more with the community. He works at a wellness company “Ekondo Life” with friends who have now become family, friends who he lives with, and those who pop in and out of his home occasionally. Friends who, with and without celebratory occasions, are present. He is not required or expected to be or do more, because he is there.
‘Yes!’ I say, ‘I find that I can only be present when I am physically present.’
When I am not physically present in a place or with people, it is difficult for me to be present at all. I cannot dedicate or engage all of myself in conversation with friends and family if they are not where I am. It feels like a punishment; removing my mind from my body, maintaining a certain state of emotion that matches the tone and mood for texts and phone calls , knowing my skin and bones don’t feel alive. The feeling is like trying to detach my head from my body and still expecting it to function or being brain dead and expecting me to know what to do with my body. It is like being ambidextrous but without skill, using this nostril to smell this and the other to smell that. It is like my left leg walking in this direction and my right leg going another. How can I know who, or what I am supposed to be?
There is a remedy for this type of thing, but like all treatments, there is expected to be a certain level of consistency. We are not expected to be sick and take a quarter or half of our prescriptions and expect wholeness. When we do this, we only learn to live with the pain, the sickness, whatever it is that has us not feeling like ourselves, until one day, it becomes so part of us, so like us, we cannot tell the difference between who we are with and without defect.
The remedy for this sort of thing is love.
If I am able to see the people in my life who bring this word alive, as frequently as possible, all the colors of my world will be too bright for even me to see sometimes. If I am able to do the things that make me feel as though I am in control of my life, and the direction my body takes morning and night, I will not feel as misplaced as often do. Seeing my people once a week or two, reading one book a month, having brunch and dinner dates weeks apart, makes me feel as though I am incomplete. The feeling is like placing the same puzzle piece in its place over and over and over again, without ever solving the whole thing.
‘What does Ekondo mean?’ I ask.
‘Community or Universe’.
My friend feels as though his life is complete, as though he wants for nothing more besides stupid wealth which oftentimes is not guaranteed. He is at the moment, satisfied with the life around him. It is easy for him to move about life so freely, not wanting and needing, because of his community and how it is effective. He is filled with just enough excitement and more than enough love to live a life that he feels so content with. I imagined what it must feel like, to have your heart beat steady five out of seven days in the week. I imagined what it must feel like to wake up with a smile on your face, to wake up expectant for the day, knowing that in your home is a friend who loves you, two more down the street, a few others a 10–15-minute drive away, and a family at work.
I know what it feels like when I am able to meet up with friends once every week or two, or once a month. How all my anxieties disappear because I know that I no longer have to perform, how endless my laughter feels, how jokes roll out our mouths and the air stinks with joy. I know how proud I am of myself, when I take time out to dress up and eat good food, read at least four books in a month or complete a short story.
‘I am jealous of you, that you feel this way most of the time. It’s such a crazy blessing.’
‘I know,’ he says, smiling at me.