#Japa to Sapa: The West is a Mirage

Well said. I stayed 40+ years in Nigeria, despite everything, I was hail and hearty. I came here, life threw me a curveball of epic proportions, I reeled badly, and no one stood by me or supported me. If not for the fact that I had a friend I had made at work, who I was sleeping in his living room at the time, I would have died. I had a mini stroke brought on by anxiety, fear for the future, disappointment, hatred for myself for making the mistake, and a crass lack of will to carry on. The paramedics, when they came, told me that if I had lost consciousness while paralysed, that would have been it for me. All the while I was paralysed and crying, I was just thinking of my aged mother and how she would promptly die after me if she heard her last child had died abroad.

I was just thinking what it was all worth, if chasing the dream here was worth my life. I was discharged from the hospital the next day, was told to rest for a couple of days, but I couldn’t. I had to resume my warehouse work or else I wouldn’t get paid the next week. It was then that I told myself that I wasn’t going to do it anymore, I was going to leave at a certain time. I’d rather live a fulfilled life on my terms than slave away at something I may not like long enough for. To each his own.