The road unspools before them, a band of desire and memory, stretching from Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Anambra, and more to the native heartlands of ancestral homes. December is here, a season thick with the scent of harmattan and the sound of preparation. For Nigerians, this pilgrimage is not merely a journey—it is a ritual, a return to origins, and a drop into the brickwork of home.
The Pull of Home
Time softens all, so the homes left behind in youth become sanctuaries. The curved fences and dusty roads acquire a sheen of myth. This return is soaked in respect to duty and delight—an unspoken pact to bring city stories back to home, to laugh under the same stars and to taste the air that knows one's truest self. The joys of sharing tales of success at work, new acquired properties in the city and even some, a time to tie the knot and become one with another.
The journey carries them not just across miles but into the corridors of memory. It is here that the past and present meet: the matriarch’s hands smoothing out wrinkles on agbada, the echo of village children’s laughter mingling with the town crier’s announcements. Each mile crossed is a step closer to wholeness.
Shared Moments and Laughter
The family table is an assortment of colours and aromas—jollof rice, steaming bowls of pepper soup, isi ewu, fisherman soup, tuwo, and the glow of both native and modern drinks to step down. Here, stories flow freely, bending and looping in the way of rivers, pulling everyone closer.
Beyond the thresholds of homes, there are the streets—alive with the drumbeats of fun, the spin of new native attires adorned in many homes. Night falls, but the celebrations rise: fireworks splitting the sky, dancers tracing ancient steps in the sand, and the air thick with music and memory.
The Road Trials
Yet, the journey is not without its ghosts. Highways twist and turn, often choked with traffic—a web where patience is light. Travelers then endure the rim of buses crammed to their edges, their passengers pressed shoulder to shoulder, each dream of home delayed by hours of inactivity.
Then creeps in the heavy dose of fear due to the increased kidnapping and bandits lurking on the highways ready to devour innocent travelers as wolves preying on their deer.
Coupled with this is the cost climb of fares that doubles like the optimism of transport workers. Road safety becomes a question whispered but not answered, for the roads can be as unforgiving as they are unpredictable. And then, upon arrival, the first light at the town's bridge reveals its own realities: power outages flickering like forgotten promises, water as elusive as rest.
Finding Peace In Chaos
But Nigerians are custodians of joy, sewing meaning even into worn moments. The delays are stories told in laughter by the roadside, the scarcity another excuse to share. Early risers scout new paths; families combine resources to conquer challenges. By the time they cross the verge into their homes, the weight of the journey fades in the glow of familiar faces.
The Return
This ritual of return is not really about geography, but more about the soul. It is an attempt to take charge of oneself in a world that spins too fast. To embrace one’s lineage and community is to assert one’s place within an unbroken chain of stories. For as they gather in the glow of Christmas lights or under the fireworks of a New Year’s sky, Nigerians rediscover what it means to belong—to a family, to a place, to a history.
And so, they will return again, each December like the last yet entirely new, the call of home echoing long after the holidays fade.
