“Are you sure it was here?” My mother asks patiently.
“Yes…” I say, frowning at my phone as I jab at the screen and zoom in, trying to pinpoint the location of the pushpin on iNaturalist’s app. I’m not used to the interface at all, and it is making my search unnecessarily difficult.
“And those we- plants aren’t them?” She checks, pointing at some plants lining the creek. It is mid-spring, but the weather doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo, and thus the creek bed is mostly dry, a few puddles of water slowly evaporating.
I quickly look up to assess them. “No.” I say. “They’re too narrow. See here?” I say, moving over to carefully pinch the thin stem. “The pictures show that the stems are much thicker. Kind of juicy.” I joke.
My mother tilts her head and considers this, surveying the area where we stand. “Then come on, they might not be here.”
I sigh, slightly frustrated, but agree to move on. Despite how certain I was that I had seen them here before, it is approaching summer, and the park conservationists have been removing invasive plants. It’s not impossible that the ones I’m looking for have already died off.
I curse my timing silently, and nod. After all, the creek crosses the road up ahead. We’ll just have to walk a little longer.
*
Despite my knowledge that the heat of Nigeria takes some time to adjust to, I’m already regretting our trip home. The air seems to sweat even as it stands still, not expending any energy. I have to have sympathy for it however, right now I am the same.
It is mid-December and the smell in the air outside the airport is something I have never smelt elsewhere. I don’t know how to describe it. But it is the smell of landing in Nigeria after a thirteen-and-a-half-hour flight and an eight-and-a-half-hour flight, often running on sleep that cumulatively means nothing when jetlag hits. I envy my cousins often when we’re getting ready to depart again. Their flight is less than seven hours. They can come back whenever they like.
I am not envying them however as we drag our bulging twenty-three kilo suitcases through the clamour outside the airport, my mind simply on keeping up with my family. Each of us has that and a carry-on suitcase and a backpack, and it takes us some time to track down someone with a large enough moto that we can begin the process of haggling with.
My siblings and I know the drill. We weren’t brought up in Nigeria, and our distinctive South Australian accents – mixed with other places that we learnt English in our formative years – make us stick out like a sore thumb and would attract people with nefarious intentions. It may seem cynical to assume that our accents would automatically deem us easy targets, but migration out of Nigeria requires one to have enough money to pay for an English exam – which would likely require one to do an English course unless you studied English in university. And in a country where a bag of fresh, high quality tomatoes – a staple of many dishes – is a luxury, even the money for an English exam would be a significant weight off of many’s shoulders.
And thus we remain quiet, some of us whispering and giggling before being looked at pointedly, as our parents arrange a ride to our hotel, their Pidgin English so smooth it seems like they never left.
*
I’m sweaty and tired by the time we reach the other park. I underestimated the weather today due to my inability to accurately evaluate how uncomfortable physical activity might be under different weather conditions, and as we walk towards the creek – mercifully shaded by large swaying gum trees – my mother looks as though she’s had just about enough of my self-indulgent griping, but mercifully she doesn’t tell me to stop.
We trek along the creek, my eyes flicking between my phone – hot to the touch from heavy use of data – and the bank of the creek where we stand. I’m ahead of my mother, determined to find this surprisingly elusive plant, when my mother calls out to me.
“Isn’t this it?” I swivel, convinced she’s found something similar but not quite, but instead I open my mouth, and find that I cannot speak.
It’s the Three-Cornered Garlic.
*
In the car, there is slightly more freedom to talk. My parents have found a driver who doesn’t know Igbo – or so it seems – and thus my parents converse freely in Igbo, commenting on things that have changed since they last returned. We don’t recognise anything of our homeland, which is not unusual, as we return roughly every three years and things are bound to change in that time, but we joke and rile each other up as best as we can in our broken Igbo, all four of us hemmed into the middle seats.
I wonder to myself if it was odd for Nigerian emigrants when they arrived in their new countries. Nigeria has no real driving rules, and one should expect to see big lorries with people sitting on top of their heavy loads, as well as cars, twenty years past their prime, with open boots strapped down with some rope to hold a piece of luggage not made to fit them. The sound of beeps puncture drives, even on the highway, where troublesome potholes are to be expected, and holdups are the norm. The cars that crashed on the side of the road lay stripped of their parts, as do the more infrequent fires, and my eyes skip over them as I instead study the people around us.
Intellectually, I am aware of the plight of many Nigerian residents. The government doesn’t invest in its people, mired by conflicts of interest and their presence in the pockets of companies that profit from an impoverished Nigeria. Neocolonialism dictates the relationships that Nigeria maintains, and thus as oil companies continue to enrich the Nigerian government’s pockets, even as police brutality, dissent and inflation rise, the Nigerian government has no interest in lifting their own people out of poverty. As I look at the people lackadaisically milling around the crowded streets however – as if cars aren’t driving erratically around them in an attempt to beat the traffic – something twists in my heart, and I wonder what it would take to get my parents to leave me with my grandparents in our home village.
*
At home, I am furiously typing away at my computer. On my phone, now cooling after its strenuous day acting as a field guide, I have four photos of the plant I went out searching for. My hands were far too shaky to take a clear picture, and I was distracted, rambling excitedly to my mother about the plant and my mild annoyance that even nonnative species (and in this case, one classified as invasive and ‘noxious’) can’t be removed from state or national parks. She sympathised, but pointed out that mistaken identification could easily result in a native plant – perhaps even an endangered one – being removed, and I had to grudgingly agree. My flora identification skills, to be fair, are far behind my fauna identification skills, and woe betide me if I ever contribute to the existential threat facing many species.
I exclaim triumphantly and eagerly note the many points of comparison between my plant (as I’ve taken to thinking of it) and a quality photo on the internet. I’ve done it. For a week I have been besotted with this plant, and determined to find it, despite its invasive status. There is something charming to me about the stem’s sturdiness, and the bright, starkly white flowers against the otherwise green and brown background, a combination of grass and dry gum leaves. I came across it on an Australian’s TikTok, and as it is native to the Mediterranean, her home region, she made a Palestinian dish with it, deciding to forage for the plant instead of using leeks or spring onions for the supermarket. Much like all other nonnative species, the plant played no part in its displacement. Human machinations have subjected it to a transcontinental journey, and this plant – to my human brain, obsessed with anthropomorphism – is particularly innocent. It was simply born here and has no recollection of its own home.
In the village, I spend a significant amount of time trying to speak Igbo to my relatives. Despite my parents’ subtle attempts to remind my older relatives that we did not go to school in Nigeria, and that our Igbo will be accented by our growing up with ndï öcha, they still tease us – light-heartedly. It’s better, they say, than those who cannot speak at all.
However, my relatives – those who see us regularly enough, and have witnessed us jump from toddling babies to shy children to laughing adolescents and now capable adults – are at least used to the fact that we do speak Igbo, and that we don’t sound like them. When others come for a visit – as they are wont to do, my grandfather often tells them before his son arrives, and it is Christmas – they are not at all aware of these children who grew up abroad but can fully understand and speak some Igbo. So, when we greet them in Igbo and they don’t understand us, it is difficult to keep the smile from slipping off my face. It is humiliating, I think, to look like someone and be a world apart from them.
At least I can still eavesdrop on their conversations. There are always perks.
*
A few months later, I’m scrolling through my camera roll, the Sisyphean need to free up some storage pushing me to delete some unnecessary photos. I happen across my photos of the Three-Cornered Garlic, and I pause.
I go back to the Wikipedia page, then look down at my clearest photo, and then back up again. Without excitement clouding my judgement, it is very evident to me that these do not resemble each other at all. I bite my lip, and go onto iNaturalist again, not quite able to believe it. But there is no denying that the plants, while remarkably similar in size, colour and texture, are not the same species. The pictures on iNaturalist have subtle differences in the depicted plants that mark them quite firmly as distinct from my photo of my plant.
A wave of emotion threatens to crest within me, but I swallow it down painfully. It’s a simple mistake to make. I’m not experienced in field identification after all, and I never studied botany. And after all, it’s a distinctive looking plant. It couldn’t possibly be too difficult to make the proper identification. I close the window quickly, confident I’ll come back to it eventually.
I never did identify the plant.
Moto is the Pidgin English word for car
Ndï öcha is the Igbo word for white person
james achusiogu (he/him) is an Igbo Nigerian transgender emerging author residing in so-called Australia. In 2024, his poem about self-creation as a trans person was published in Femme Dyke Zine. His focus is on pinning down incommunicable emotions and expressing them in a way that allows for catharsis in the reader. When he’s not writing or reading something that leaves him wide-eyed with awe, he can be found out in nature, captivated by a frog, or perhaps an earthworm. You can find him online on Instagram, @james___ach.