To-Do List

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August/September 2025Fictionvol9-no3
To-Do List

Illustration by William Igwilo / THE REPUBLIC.

THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / FICTION DEPT.

To-Do List

‘I woke up one day and I realized that I simply despised the smallness that life here hoists on everyone. Small loves, big needs met by small resources, small hopes quashed by gigantic misdeeds, small joys flickering off with each new leaving.’
To-Do List

Illustration by William Igwilo / THE REPUBLIC.

THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / FICTION DEPT.

To-Do List

‘I woke up one day and I realized that I simply despised the smallness that life here hoists on everyone. Small loves, big needs met by small resources, small hopes quashed by gigantic misdeeds, small joys flickering off with each new leaving.’
  • Call agent Akan, confirm flight tix.

  • Collect passport from visa office.

  • Buy a new jacket for the passport, something blue
    maybe also, black or grey.

  • Call Adanna

  • Go to Balogun market—prioritize travel bags, thick cardigans and sweaters.

  • Go to mummy’s place, collect the bags she wants you to give Aunty Isioma when you get to Montreal.

  • Weigh bags.

  • GET PORTABLE WEIGHT CHECKER for luggage.

  • Tell Mummy not to worry about the wrappers.

  • Text Kadijah about the braids appointment.

  • Get Xpression attachments. C: black and burgundy.

  • Cancel tennis coaching lessons, see if a refund is possible.

  • Call Adanna.

  • Sort clothes to give away.

  • Get a Ghana-must-go for sorted clothes.

  • Call Halima to see if she is still interested in the chiffon gown or the maxi pleated skirt or the off-shoulder top.

  • Arrange a courier to deliver them.

  • Arrange a courier to send Diana the rattan globe lamp she said she liked when she slept over in June.

  • Ask Uchechi if she is still buying the AC.

  • Tell Udo that someone else has already paid for the couches.

  • Ask her if she would like the bedside table and the movable wooden wardrobe instead. Otherwise, send the number of the carpenter.
  • CaLL adanNna.

  • Buzz Fiyin about the apartment, see if she still wants to take it—remind her that the landlord likes prompt rent payment and thinks she is a relative.

  • Tell her not to speak with the upstairs neighbour who asks too many questions.

  • Tell her that the downstairs neighbours are fine, that last Christmas the family sent their house-help, Cecilia, over with jollof rice and peppered turkey and that she returned with a small cooler of fried rice and asun sauce.

  • Tell Fiyin that she can talk to them when the water isn’t pumping or when she needs petrol when it gets scarce or when she wants someone to check the light when the power goes off or when she needs a ride to ShopRite on Sundays.

  • Book a nail appt.

  • Ask for something practical, short and longlasting.

  • Buy nail polish.

  • Go to Ebeano. Use shopping voucher that came from Fiyin as birthday gift.

  • Household section will have items that might be useful.

  • Pack the books.

  • Get 2 Ghana-must-go bags.

  • XXL size.

  • Start with the speculative fiction from secondary school, the history nonfiction from university, the literary fiction from final year, the romance obsessions from the Deloitte internship (light desserts after hours of endless toil and neck cramps), the financial crime nonfiction from junior level, the self-helps from managerial level, the year before this one, the year when slack buzzed with the exit of another colleague, starting a second master’s degree in the UK.

  • Tell Fabian he can sell the car.

  • Make sure he sells the car.

  • Pack up all of Adanna’s things.

  • Call Adanna

  • Compose a text. Keep it light: Hey Adanna. I was just packing up my house and I realized I still have so many of your things here. There is that side table you gave me when I moved out of that flat we used to share in Iganmu after NYSC. You know the one with the landlord who had a curfew and that sometimes flooded when it rained. There is that pile of romance classics you brought with you that weekend that you and Bode had your first huge fight. You hadn’t read any of them, just spent hours fuming, avoiding his calls and getting anxious when he stopped calling. I also found that dress we both bought at a clearance sale in Surulere. Do you remember how long the line was? (Too much). I am reaching out because I don’t know what to do with them. If your brother Arinze is around, I can send them to him. Does he still live in Lagos?

  • Visit Muna’s place for the last therapy session that began in June, the same month the car stopped in the middle of Lekki expressway, out of fuel, with lines of cars crowding the AP filling station just off the road.

shop the republic

shop the republic

  • Tell Muna about the dream. The one where you are running down a paved street in thick winter boots and it feels like a rock is sitting at the centre of your chest. Tell her that although you can’t see the rock, you can tell it is a scoria and it shouldn’t be so heavy, yet it is. Tell her that at first nothing happens in the beginning except the assumed heaviness of the rock in the centre of your chest, and that when you come to this realization, you are made aware, with sinking terror, that you will never stop running and then not just your heart is heavy, the winter boots now feel like they have rocks in their soles and the paved street is still paved but has now gained a clinical quality such that you are determined to keep running through it, out of it.

  • Call Adanna.

  • No, maybe another text: Hey Adanna, I am nearly finished packing up. I figured you may not respond to the message I sent some weeks ago. I also tried to call, but you haven’t picked up. I do need to know what to do with your things, I don’t want to give them out just like that. To be honest with you, I understand the silence. If I was in your shoes, I think I would do the same thing. But you have to understand I was in shock. When you told me you were leaving, it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy for you, it was that I didn’t know who I would be in this city without you in it. Actually, that’s a lie. I did know who I would be in this city, I would be the one who learned that her best friend was leaving the country a week before she left. I understand that the visa came suddenly, that the semester was starting the next week, but I don’t understand how I didn’t know that you had applied for it at all, that your body was already aimed for leaving, that—you know what, that one na old story. I need to know what to do with your things abeg. If you don’t want to respond, have Arinze call me.

  • Arrange a courier to send the blender to Malik.

  • Tell Malik that the blender’s engine is weak. It will blend tomatoes and pepper but not anything iced.

  • Change money.

  • Write to the Japa Hopefuls 2021 group on WhatsApp to see if anyone is travelling on the same date as you are.

  • See if anyone has also started shopping, if anyone would like to go to Balogun market together.

  • Also write a note thanking them for being a great support system. Thank them for walking you through the IELTS test and laughing with you about the ridiculousness of having to take an IELTS test in the first place. In the note, remind them of the morning in April when a group member’s visa was denied, the same group member who had sold his car, taken a loan from a microfinance bank and gave up his apartment to complete his application fees; and how, after the denial, everyone in the group pooled money together to help him move back to his parent’s house in Ibadan. Thank them for the visa interview tips: smile and be authoritative, a doctor who had been trying to leave for a year advised; display measured enthusiasm, a married bank manager who recently got his visa approval offered; try not to look nervous, they only want to ascertain that your documents are complete and accurate, a former teacher who was planning to move her two children to where their father and her husband already was for five years warned.

  • Tell them you have enjoyed being a part of this big, big family of leavers, of people shedding properties and accents, learning a new skill, mastering Goggle map routes and potential train rides, chugging down the chalky possibility that Immigration might delay them at their points of entry even with stamped complete documents, spitting out the dread that although their minds were already in these new points of entry, their bodies would remain here in Nigeria, bound by unforeseen technicalities.

  • Call Adanna and apologize.

  • Consider the bone structure of the apology, trace the silence after the news, chew on the lull of waiting and of recalculating importance, land at the evening of Adanna’s going away party where you laid in bed, letting your phone ring and ring and ring and ring and ring until you shut your eyes. Splayed over your mind’s eye was a memory of Adanna telling a room full of friends and friends of friends once at a house party a few months ago that she had no plans to leave, that everyone she cared about was here and how in that moment, your decision around staying, your inability to find scholarships turned messianic, ordained.

  • Compose a text.

  • Start with the truth: Hey again Adanna, I know I am the last person you expect to hear from. I leave in two days, Arinze called me and I’ve arranged to send your items to him.

  • Proceed with hands pressed together: This may be my final text. In all honesty, that year after you told me you were leaving was rough for me. Yes, there was the matter of not knowing, there was also the matter of not knowing where that placed me in the priority list of our friendship. Plus I was having trouble with my relocation plans. And then there was you, my brilliant friend. I envied the ease that allowed your leaving. The stagnancy of my situation shocked me into the possibility that I may never see you in a long time. That I may never leave. I don’t know that I am sufficiently articulating the reason behind my withdrawal, behind the months of silence that followed and the missed calls and the texts I never responded to, I don’t know that I have the language to justify it.

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shop the republic

  • End with contrition, with hope: You don’t have to say anything immediately, you don’t say anything at all, but I will be in Ontario. Udo told me that’s where you moved to from Toronto. I’d love to meet up for some coffee if you are open to it.

  • Tell Akudo you no longer want a going away party. Ask her if she and the girls can just come by the house. You should cook them some afang.

  • Ask Akudo to come and get snacks together for the girls’ night. At the store, remember to tell her how everything seems to be shutting you off. How you no longer feel like buying the pistachio doughnuts you like from Milk and Honey or randomly walking into Eric Kayser to work outside the office. Tell her that Lagos is closing itself off to you or maybe you have turned yourself away from its gristly charm, that in this city that has held all of your biggest and brightest memories in its playfully dubious palm, you can tell that it is easily accepting of your parting of ways.

  • Get that facial you could only afford for your birthday four years ago, when your salary still meant something and Adanna still came to spend the weekend every other month.

  • Write back to the journalist working on the story about why young people are leaving. He’d called it a crippling exodus and had asked if you would like to answer some questions.

  • Why are you leaving? One day I came back from work and my generator wouldn’t come on. I slept in darkness the entire night, barely sleeping. Power didn’t come on and it wasn’t until 3 a.m. that my neighbour’s generator rattled dead, empty of petrol. It felt like a curiously designed cruelty. How long did your visa application process take? It took two years. What was the process like for you? The morning of my visa interview I stood in line at the visa office amongst hundreds of applicants. The morning was hot and the sun was high so people, me included, had covered our heads with handkerchiefs and scarves. I wanted to be above it, I wanted to feign disinterest as the visa office officials ushered people in hurriedly, as they barked out instructions to applicants, but I couldn’t. Inside the visa office, a coordinator appeared and began yelling: Canadian visa applicants! Move to aisle B! I don’t want to repeat myself, please move to aisle B! Nobody protested loudly, but the man seated next to me mumbled begrudgingly under his breath, a woman behind me hissed, and I heard someone else say this is too much, this is too much, twice. For days after, I couldn’t yank the coordinator’s voice from my head; his acidic tone, the sneer in his instructions and the unmasked exasperation in his shoulders. Was he bored? Was he repulsed, even slightly, by the nakedness of our ambitions? We all moved to aisle B. Hours later, I went in for my interview and as I made my way out of the imposing brick and glass building, I passed by a reflection of my face, a reflection I didn’t stop to interrogate. What did it matter? The tears had already reached my chin.

  • Don’t answer at the part where he asks you if you plan on returning.

  • When did you decide you were going to leave? It wasn’t a specific moment for me. I came to it as though I had always been planning towards it, as though it was an understanding I had acquiesced to but was only realizing. I woke up one day and I realized that I simply despised the smallness that life here hoists on everyone. Small loves, big needs met by small resources, small hopes quashed by gigantic misdeeds, small joys flickering off with each new leaving. In the support group where I was, I know a man who told the group that he decided to leave when he rushed his seriously wounded son to the general hospital and the doctor ran out of anaesthesia while stitching his son’s wounds. The pharmacy was also short on supplies, so the man had to stuff his son’s mouth with a handkerchief. There was also this lady, just about my age who said she decided to leave when she realized her monthly book club meetings had thinned from 27 to 5 people. It depressed her, made her feel like she was trying to resuscitate a corpse that liked being dead.

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shop the republic

  • Spend some days with mommy.

  • Buy her the boubou she liked the last time you both went to Balogun market. When you see, ask and see if she still remembers how you both liked to spend every last Saturday in the market trying to find the right denim skirt, the best inexpensive wig, that lilac aso-oke material she saw on a friend and was determined to find.

  • Send the books you packed to your nephew Siji.

  • Add a note telling him to cherish them.

  • Get a wax.

  • Cancel gym membership.

  • Buy shea butter.

  • Buy an adapter.

  • Sell the pillows.

  • Sell the mattress.

  • Sell the picture frame.

  • Sell the oven.

  • Replace the tissues you’ve been crying with.

  • Call Akudo more often.

  • Call Adanna.

  • Compose a text: Hey Adanna, I got your message. I can’t say that it didn’t sting but I respect your decision. After I sent your things to Arinze, I found that pink scarf you liked to tie on your head. I don’t know when or how you forgot it at mine, but I remember you were agitated for a while when you couldn’t find it. You’d had it since university and it never left your head especially at important moments like during exams or when you went on a date with that guy you were crushing on in 200 level or when we were at your dad’s burial. I am bringing it with me to Ontario. I know now that it’s unlikely, but if we ever bump into each other again, I hope I have it with me so I can give it to you.

  • Add Ontario to your world clock.

  • Call Ify to confirm that she can pick you from the Ontario airport.

  • Double check to see if she still needs you to bring her some stockfish or dried egusi.

  • Call Akudo to see if she still wants to accompany you and mummy to the airport.

  • Give the carpet to Malik and the fan and the shoe rack even though you know he is also leaving.

  • Fiyin insisted on moving her things into the apartment, so get someone to clean the house so moving in is easy for her.

  • Buy a backpack.

  • Buy a journal.

  • Buy a pen.

  • Leave a sticky note at the door for Fiyin. Let it read: Enjoy your new home, I hope it prepares you sufficiently for your leaving⎈

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