CHAPTER 20: Is It a Crime to Love?
Is it a crime to love?
As we speak, my future partner was supposed to be on a plane, coming to join me for Valentine’s Day. During his first week here, our goal was to discuss this book and shed light on this pathetic trade, helping to save young computer and science university graduates who are forced into it just to pay their debts and put food on the table.
He was even set to appear on the popular television show Tout le monde en jase. We wanted to speak out.
He earned his own way by selling his writing notes as a ghostwriter, his poems, and his podcasts. He worked tirelessly on a script that tells the truth about the "Yahoo Club," sharing his notes from the inside of that world. He even sold his most incredible script—the masterpiece he adored. He was truly in love. Like any lover who truly loves, he needed to cross the ocean to see for himself, to join me, and to see that all along this journey, we were meant to save each other.
He was sitting on the plane... or so I thought.
The next morning, I was lying in bed looking at BBC News on Google. I read on my phone that the police had arrested 20 men in Ghana and 45 Nigerians from the Yahoo Club. I panicked. I hadn’t heard from him in 12 hours. My heart simply stopped beating. It was -25°C outside. I went out to shovel snow with Starlett, numb with cold.
When I came back in, I sat in the living room, staring at my phone. Today, I was supposed to receive a note from Sansom saying he had arrived at Dorval airport. I was waiting for that "I'm here" message.
Instead, the silence was broken by a jarring reality. Sansom sent a message saying he was at the police station. I didn't want to believe it. I asked him, "Is this another one of your prompts?" I thought it might be another script, another part of the game.
In response, he sent me a video.
Because the reputation of Nigeria precedes itself, even before he could leave, the security guards at the airport went through everything. They ransacked his belongings, searching for any reason to stop him, and they went as far as reading our book.
Two police officers were sitting on blue plastic chairs in a dusty courtyard. They were holding the phone—they were reading our soul, our story. It was no longer a prompt; it was a scene of cold reality. Because of this, everything stopped. The plans were shattered. The flight was postponed. The future we had built was suddenly suspended in the dust of that police station.
I am still waiting as we speak.
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