How I Still Dream
Climate stories from young people in Nigeria
Even amid what looks like our peril, what comes to my mind is what tomorrow holds. Tomorrow is gloomier than ever, and it feels as if it doesn't want to come. I thought I did my best, growing up on the right side of nature—growing my food, hunting, recycling, and planting for tomorrow. The world was perfect; I created my universe. As I grew older, uncertainty seeped in like that flood in 2019 that swept my friends and me in school. Nobody cared; nobody helped. We had to dust ourselves off and get up.
When hope started seeping back, they said we destroyed the climate. "How?" I wondered, "I have not even started living," "What did I do to deserve this?" I dream, but the unseen felt powerful as climate change sweeps the little hope I had away. I ask myself; do I even have a future? I enjoyed my childhood in that rural area, where illiteracy was our challenge, but not climate change. That thick ambition of becoming a professor is shaky now.
Deep within me, I know that if I give up, I have messed up. All it takes for climate change to win is for me to tell myself that I cannot fight, living in denial. But will my heart forgive me if all I do is fold my arms? I wouldn't say I like the world, but this time, I want to channel that energy into doing something to save my future. Who will help me if I don't allow myself? Even now, as I work from home, the heat of the ever-burgeoning climate impact frustrates me. I take a walk around the city, and the rain, unexpected, starts falling. I would like to know if the world wants me to be here. Why can't everything be like before, I ask.
The education that comes with challenges to people like me is what you need to get yourself and your community's situation out there. Is this not a sign that I should stop dreaming? If that education can get me to places where I need to be, to share my situation and help save the future generation from what I've gone through, I would do it. My 10-year-old little sister, who now runs away from the exact nature I once fell in love with, is why I continue dreaming.
