MIP12: el-Dorado - Found Where The Sky Grows Wider
Twelve Disciples. Twelve Tribes. Twelve gates. Twelve Hours of Day. Twelve hours of Night. Twelve calendar months. Twelve years. Twelve MIPs.
I tried a different writing style and if you're one for shorter, more consice texts, go to my Medium page. I must warn, you might miss the tea, since you're the reason the line: “the-best-way-to-hide-something-from-Black-people-is-to put-it-in-a-book." was said.
If you're here for a good, spell-binding narrative, be my guest!
The Twelfth of the MIPs nearly didn’t happen, but recently one of my very good friends from UNILAG - Christabel, surprised me with Chimamanda’s latest book - Dream Count and while that was super thoughful, what was even more thoughtful was the note she sent with it:
"We bonded over literature and your writing - basically, I'm one of your biggest fan (but in a totally non-creepy way). I hope this book inspires you to write more often because, let's be real, the world needs more of your words... and I need more to read!"
That was one big inspiration, not gonna lie and now what you’re reading is the dozenth marker on a road that began with trembling wings and dreams too wide for the horizon I knew. In 2020, I named it elDorado - a golden idea, shimmering and distant. The fledgling bird, head turned skyward, feathers still learning the wind with time, which as always, has a way of revealing the map hidden inside the heart.
During the pandemic-inspired lockdown when I wrote about el-Dorado, retrospectively, I was not sure I grasped the full import of what that year's MIP was about. First off, the year of the lockdown was a year of many highs and lows and it was the year I fully became japasexual, if there’s anything like that - if not, why don’t I have my Nobel Prize for New Word Category yet?
It was the year I did good creative work and won an award (the next year) and was to represent Nigeria on the global stage at Cannes in France, but was botched because of the pandemic. It was the year I had a surgery to fix an impacted tooth, fighting through a blinding tooth pain for months, that nearly drew tears from my eyes for the first time in about a decade and made me overdose on pain relievers while questioning my existence. It was the year I met Naila and her Mom, the birds that nested at my window where I hung my Spectranet to be sure they can-see-my-screen, they can-hear-me and many other lockdown stories. Amongst many other things, it was the year I was grateful for receiving the gift of the vision to elDorado. Even when I received it, I wasn’t fully sure what it was entirely about, but I received it and shared it still.
Five years later, it became a full circle moment for me as this journey to elDorado now takes form. If I was waxing philosophical, I’d have said I was the Naila I wrote about. But really, what if I was Naila, because pivoting careers and an existential move fits the description.
You’re born, and you grow beautiful feathers in a familiar environment. You know everyone, everyone knows you. The sound of known birdly coos, the familiar nests here-there, the occasional presence of family birds around you, checking in, encouraging you, celebrating every shiny, new feather you grow; giving you guardrails when they can. If you leave the nest at all, you are just around the corner, with your own community. There’s a safety and comfort that comes from what you’ve always known, where you’ve always gone, who’s always coming and the best part is that you’re growing almost perfectly in a quickly shrinking nest.
How paradoxical? Hold my malt.
I wrote about whatever Naila was thinking, trading the comfort and safety of the nest for the unpredictability of the sky? The weather? The means of livelihood? What would Naila eat?
Maybe we don’t speak enough about the quiet courage it takes to begin again - to leave competence behind and choose curiosity, to trade the applause of mastery for the hush of learning, to lift off, not knowing if your wings will hold or fold.
This twelfth note feels like flying over a landscape I could only once imagine. Taking flight across a great ocean — the kind you measure not just in miles, but in what it asks of you: courage, patience, leaving pieces of familiarity behind and showing you your own reflection - the very emotions you carry inflight. It is more than water; it is a mirror. And in its depths, you might see a thousand questions and a million more answers - depending on where you look.
I think this short poem I wrote captures the thought around moving away from what you know to starting over:
Remember the nest - safe, small, and full of songs you knew.
Every new feather grew under watchful eyes and knowing glances.
Leaving meant silence first, then the sound of your own wings.
Overhead, the sky grows wider than stories had ever told.
Curiosity calls - not loudly, but enough to make you rise.
And still, doubt circles like wind unsure of its direction.
Trust becomes the only branch left to stand on.
Even falling will teach you something about flight; to keep going.
Don’t let the distance shrink the dream - let it shape it.
The skies that echo with new beginnings are yours for the taking,
On cold mornings, remind yourself: the air is only unfamiliar, not unfriendly.
Cracks in your confidence will let the light of mastery pour in.
And every awkward wingbeat is part of your flight.
Naila, indeed all birds, flew first, once - trembling, unsure, but flew.
As do you, across oceans, into unknown currents.
Days will pass into months, and you will grow more fluent in this new wind.
Amidst it all, don’t stop re-learning to soar from what gets familiar.
Dear you, even when the lure of the nest is easier, warmer, more comfortable; you’re better off fighting to fly where the terrain is unfamiliar, for it will build strength in your wings, to soar where the sky grows wider.
For as oft as you choose to shrink yourself to fit into old comfort nests you have outgrown, your future self is writing cheques your comfort zone will never let you cash.
Here’s to God in whose palm I’m engraved. 🥂
Oluranti Akerele
01/08/25
T: @Super_Akerele
IG: @superakerele
3:38am.
