A Bed of Thorns and Roses

Lovely evening or morning to you all depending on your time zone. I had missed a day of posting due to my inability to write an article to post. Every time I picked my phone to type, I just lose the ability to concentrate on my thought, and end up falling asleep. I think this happened three times last night, so I just decided to drop my phone and sleep the third time.

All these had happened because I have been sleep deprived for about two weeks now, barely sleeping 5 hours a day because I spend practically all day in farm and come home in the evening, between cooking, writing and interacting with posts among other things. So all these activities eats into my sleep time. But I have had the time today to catch up on sleep, at least, the little I could when it was not noisy. Tomorrow is another day to continue paying my sleep debt.

Moving on to the main purpose of this article, I had overheard some of my classmates talking about travelling abroad last night in the apartment. Some seem to have the notion that long as they can make it to a foreign country, they have made it, and would never return, as there are lots of jobs and opportunities abroad than there are in our country, Nigeria. One said that if he was to travel out, it would be for vacation and not to reside there permanently. And that he doesn’t think he’ll feel at home there.

My mind quickly rushed back to a book I read 12-14 years ago in Junior Secondary School. It was a book titled THE STRAINS OF PARADISE from what I could remember, it was about a man who left his life in Nigeria to start anew in the US. So, when he realised that ‘paradise’ wasn’t as easy as he’d thought, it was already too late to go back to his relatively better life back in his country.

This I can guess has been the realisation of many who had abandoned their life to start afresh in a foreign country; the realisation that life isn’t as rosy and easy as portrayed in the movies. I have had the chance to ask a friend of mine who had relocated to the United States in 2015 with her entire family. And although she talked about how the social structure is better than back home, there is still a sense of freedom with being in your country than being a foreigner in another country.

I had understood what she meant, because I could relate it to a book I had read in 2018: SECOND CLASS CITIZEN by Buchi Emecheta. Basically talks about the feeling of being a guest in a foreign country. There is a popular quote that "THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME" and while the question that saying brings to my mind is WHERE IS HOME? We can agree that home can be where your family is, or where you’re at peace or most comfortable. And not necessarily where you grew up in. What if I go to a foreign land and start a family and were happy, doesn’t that make it home?

Also, there are restrictions as to what you can try or attempt to do in a developed country as opposed to your country or do I say – my country. Like for instance, in Nigeria, I can say a lot of persons do not pay tax. Say for instance the roadside sellers or hawkers. These people earn a living from their venture, thus, it is a business. One that yields profit, however little. These profits ought to be taxed in a proper system, like in developed countries. But again, there are a lot of jobs that pay below minimum wage here in Nigeria, but that isn’t the case abroad, as there are protocols put in place to check this. That is not to say that there aren’t jobs that pay below minimum wage, but is is not as common as you’ll fine here.

CONCLUSION

I guess the truth is the mindset that the grass is greener outside the country stems in the fact that they exchange rate of hard currencies to our local currency is high. And I believe if that gap is closed, less people would be eager to travel outside the country seeking greener pastures. That is not to say that the sole reason people want to go out of the country is to make more money. Some just want to live a more organised life, and the social structure and the systematics that comes with living in developed countries (I have heard people say that). I believe there are more opportunities to be exploited in developing countries than in developed countries.

DISCLAIMER: this is by no means an attempt to dissuade people from doing what they want to, neither is it an advice against travelling out of your country, neither is it an attempt to paint any country in a negative light. It is merely the manifestation of my thoughts in writing.

Thank You For Reading 🖤🖤