By Henry Akubuiro
Becoming Britico, Tobi Adewusi, SCLK, UK, 2022, 150
“Not every environment accepts the dream shaping progress you want to put across. Take a second look at what you dream about, be sure it can progress very well where you are; Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not fertile grounds for a farmer’s dream seeds. Go and relocate!” writes Israelmore Ayivor in Shaping the Dream.
This underscores the relentless search for greener pastures by many Africans these days. Tobi Adewusi’s Becoming Britico captures the relocation move of a Nigerian family to the UK, the underlying factors and its tolls along the way.
The voice of the telling in this story is a third person narrator, who situates the immediate setting in Lagos, Nigeria, before it switches over to the UK midway into the narrative. The couple, Faith and Dayo, work together in the family’s real estate business, each playing a different role, as they strive to improve the lot of the family after a big setback, which forced them to sell their house.
As the couple is beginning to find their feet, the husband moots the idea of the family relocating to the UK. “I can’t leave my country and go to a country filled with depressed people. I love my joy here…,” the wife, Faith, is unimpressed.
If you are thinking of relocating abroad from this part, this fiction offers you preparatory lessons on what it takes to visit the “war zone” that’s the visa office. When Faith goes on bended knees, you then realise that securing a visa is like making it to heaven here.
More painful for Faith is auctioning the family’s property to raise additional money for their sojourn. Their children, Jed and Abike, can’t understand what’s going on —why should their parents be selling off their things. “Are we broke?”
The second part of this narrative is set in the UK after a sapping relocation adventure. “The British weather welcomed them with its chill,” narrates the author on page 83. “It was late November, and winter had started its late descent.” The children are surprised each time they speak, their breath would appear like smoke because of the cold weather. “It was a funny sight,” (p.90).
In addition to that is the culture shock of being in a new social environment. It takes some doing, though, as we find out in this novel, to get used to it. The family is to live briefly in Chelmsford before moving to Colchester, which is within the university where Dayo got a university admission and a location on the London commuter belt.
Faith finds, to her dismay, too, that her two children can’t go to the classes befitting of their competence but have to be admitted in classes for year 6 and year 8 respectively. “…. it’s not about how brilliant your child is. Children are placed according to their age,” explains a friend.
Securing a job by Faith becomes most challenging. She prefers setting up her own business and being self employed, but discovers it’s a different environment. Even her attempt to secure a job is met with rejections, leading to demoralisation, until luck smiles on her.
The story ends on a high, for, after surviving the teething problems of relocating to the UK, things are beginning to fall in place, and they are finally “becoming Britico,’’ as Faith described their relocation from the beginning. This book is an eye opener for African migrants and a study in perseverance.