Job Hunting is a Job

I’d rather be just tired and not tired and bored, exhausted from the activity of nothing. And I used to think the saying, "busy doing nothing" was just that, a saying. My days are swallowed by the whale of idleness and in this large sea of whales I recognize a thousand like me, I would say hello but my lips are too tired from saying nothing. Social media is our meeting point, Twitter with her gist; thank you Sub Delivery Man, SJWs stop making our playground a melting pot of ticking bombs. Snapchat with her stories.

I am a moving devil’s workshop but the arms of my empty pockets have restrained me from hatching my plans. My people would have to wait before I gather the courage to once again ask dissatisfied parents for more money to come see them. Agba la gba like me their eyes say as my father wires money to my Sahara desert of an account. 

When will my life start? Time greets me cheerily with each passing second and my stoic face nods in tune to her song.  

Somewhere far in my wonderland, I see the cars to come with the matching wardrobe that cockroaches don’t feed on, shoes that have not tasted almost every area in Lagos in my hunt of a job and a phone I don’t have to coax into staying on. Under my pillar of pillows and blanket, I hear what sounds like the phone ring, the urgency and speed I muster to pick that call, Usain Bolt has nothing on it. It may be that job, the millionth one I was told “we would get back to you”. And I don’t even have credit or money to buy credit to call that person back.

News Flash; It is not them. It is not that office that promised me a call back neither is it those ones that smiled widely and said “you would hear from us soon.”

It is my aunt of many years long forgotten, the pleasantries are a good foundation for the question that is coming, I can feel it, my bones are prepared and my mind knows what is next, but when she spews forth the lava that attacks me and my fellow job seeking colleagues I am surprised into a three-second-silence.

Let me make something clear, we are not jobless, job hunting is as tedious as any job in this world, we are hunters just not with guns but with beautifully crafted CVs in all manners of fonts and sizes ready to storm the world with the remnants of knowledge we crammed in school to pass exams. 

 “Omalicha” she calls me; like what is Omalicha about my life now, “what are you doing now?” Ah!!!!! Why?

The last time a potential employer asked me "what I was doing?" across the phone while doing my exercise routine, like the stupid girl I am, I replied “I am working out” I could hear the smile in his voice that is when I knew my CV shall be used to sell Puff Puff. Then he reiterated the question, I answered appropriately this time. But…

I slowly whisper “nothing” to my aunt's question. |Then she utters a prayer, like that is the thing that would provide me with a job
"Greet your mummy for me"
Don't you have her number? She doesn't ask for my account number. Evil relatives.

Couldn’t this woman have asked me to send my account number? Why this question that has no answer?  If I had gotten a job I would have published it in the papers, how else do you announce such a great miracle. Finding something a thousand and one people are looking for is a miracle.

My answer to this very ambiguous and yet pointed question is nothing, in my twenty something life at this twenty something age, I am doing nothing.

Proudly without shame I stand at the top of my imaginary mountain my kinky stubborn hair doing what natural African hair does in the wind, my arms spread out and my legs in unison to the stretching of my arms. I am yelling “my name is Adaora, my occupation is nothing. I have no experience because I don’t know where they sell it, all I have is certification, edakun, biko give me a job.” This might work since going for interviews have failed me.