My journalism journey and the place I stopped moving

I hardly knew that returning to my hometown six years after I left would be a depressing experience for me. The last time I was a full resident of Nnobi, my hometown, was as a 15-year-old high school graduate leaving town for the university. Now done with my university education and National Youth Service program, I was returning home a free man, full of dreams and a desire to rest with my family and friends after all those years with strangers in lands far away from home.

I stepped down at Nnobi, feeling like I’d been on a shuttle that had returned to J.F.K Space Center after six years in orbit. Apart from the church where I was baptized, everything else had changed. New buildings stared at me as if they could shout, “Who the hell is this?” The roads appeared to be wider and longer, callous, and uninviting. No one knew I was coming home, so I was not surprised that no one was there to pick me up. I had to carry my luggage and trek the one-kilometer distance from the bus stop to my home.

I kept moving. Two steps down the road, I decided that my first task would be to chronicle the stories of my family before they changed too. I started recalling the stories I had heard over the years. I especially remembered those stories my Uncle Alex had told me. He was the first person to explain why my grandfather had declared that he would…