How Did We Get Here?

a letter to 6 year old Bright, on turning 26

i turn 26 in less than 24 hours of you receiving this mail, and i can’t help but think of what to write to you, in fact even openly admitting i’m turning 26 is quite the proof of a shift that has happened in my mind. OGs here know it’s customary to receive a mail from me to you and while i have gone over and over in my head on different things to talk about, i settled on this because for some reason i can’t seem to shake off the question, “how did i get here really?” I ask that because, when i think of the different things that have happened to me in these two decades and six years so far on earth, i really look back at six year old Bright and i see him ask the question back as well.

To catch a glimpse of this question, i must hold your hand and walk you through a bit of a timeline, so while you read, know that six year old Bright is tugging at your hand and saying “please, come.” Now i was quite the kid, all smiles, not a care in the world, all i wanted to do was follow my mom to work, and read my queen primer, because really, really, I am up, up I go.

please tell me you used this in your formative years…..

Little me was first fascinated with drawing and books and music, and occasionally dance. Back then, i had no idea what being a first child meant, my immediate younger brother was just under a year younger than me, so we were practically seen as twins, i don’t remember much of our shared time as kids aside from the stories my mom and dad would tell us, but from the pictures my dad kept of us, i could tell i was always looking out for the young lad, so maybe responsibility was passed down subtly already, and this reminds me of the last joy of little Bright, looking at pictures, so maybe, when 26 year old me asks 6 year old Bright, “did you ever think we would become a photographer?” he would say, “i wouldn’t put it past us, i always loved looking at photos and fiddling with daddy’s film camera.”

So, that my friends is the beginning of this story, of how the seeds of being an artist were sown early on, now the joys for 6 year old Bright don’t go on for much longer before he begins to condition himself to be isolated, because somewhere along the line he wore responsibility like the boots that he utterly loved, when he was 5, somewhere along the line, he would begin to take an identity the world forced on him, and carefree Bright would now be the one to sit inside the house and watch other kids play from behind a protector, and for my foreign readers, what we call a protector is basically welded iron bars in front of a veranda of a house, which reminds me, architecture in the early 2000s had a lot more soul than these expensive monotonous boxes we live in now. For the first son of a pastor in one of the fast rising churches in Nigeria, i didn’t have a lot of leeway, and my path was set for me, be top of the class, and because i was smart, “oh Bright will be a doctor,” be a model African kid basically. So, when we would move from our house in old Port Harcourt Town, and go to a local government in Rivers State, called Ahoada, because my dad had gotten the directive to go plant a church in a nearby village, i would now start junior high school, and that taught me early on what adjustment looked like, i learned to not hold on to things or people as much. I went on to get admitted to this school and small as i was then, sitting in front of the class with new faces, i still knew in my heart i was a special kid, maybe not talented then, but special because i easily became the class favorite, my mates were kind to me, the ones that thought i was cute anyway, the others didn’t like me because i was liked lol, funny, but like i said, i didn’t hold on to things, so even when i would try in my spare time to draw cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Hercules, and my siblings would smile and say “it looks fine ohh, Bright,” i could not keep on with it, because, “i was going to be a doctor,” so really again, “how did we get here?”

The heartbreak from one certain cat-eyed, light-skinned Ahoada girl would make me discover i could write, Facebook had just broken through then, and you can imagine what that was like, i was feeling blessed with 99 others except her, her name was Excel, i can never forget, boy was that such a crush lol, ahnnn kidsss, we are cute lol, because what did i know about the workings of the heart? Anyway, i left that school, and by this time, at home, i would be blamed for why my youngest brother had a burn accident with hot water, among other things while been, constantly be told, “do not be a disappointment,” i had forgotten anything that related to expressing myself, all i wanted was to live up to expectations, but senior high was such a crazy time for me, first time i would be learning independence, first time i would be mingling with other people, and it was something else, because 12 year old me had no identity, it was just vibes and a bit of handsomeness, that newly found freedom caused me to spiral, academically it was a losing game, becuase, i didn’t focus on my books and i am sure you know how that looked like back at home, but what could i do?, different as i was, i tried my best to make friends, i didn’t participate in regular boy conversations like football, and i was mostly around the girls, i guess one thing you can’t take from me is that i look good, so popularity was something i had a taste of early, but again, that 12 year old Bright will now grow to be the person who gets flown around and outside Nigeria because of storytelling? i would never have agreed.

i remember moving to Lagos in 2024, and i tried to reconnect with a school mate, and he said, “you didn’t strike me then as a photographer, but bro, na your calling from what i am seeing.”

the messages

What he doesn’t know is that between 2015 and 2017, i would go through quite the identity remodeling, even if it took seeing my dad looking at me like a failure, and saying i wasn’t following in his footsteps. Now i never got the admission for medicine, i had failed the exams, and even lied about my score, just so that i could save face, my score wasn’t so high in JAMB also and i was given admission to read Agricultural Economics and Extension at the University of Port Harcourt, where i would use the first two years to be a founding member of a teen talent group, of singers and rappers, i know, i know, how many lives have i lived abi? Well, that is why 26 year old Bright is asking 6 year old Bright, who i hope you haven’t left his hand, “how did we get here?” Please hold his hand, he didn’t have someone to do that for him (i will try not to tear up before the end of this letter).

2017, Uniport Baskeball Field

Back to our story, where were we? Oh yes, teen talent group, we would organize shows on the weekends somewhere in Port Harcourt, organize rap battles when classes were going on, behind the arena in Uniport, like i said, popularity followed me, so when i had a number of people recognize me in school the next day, i wasn’t surprised, because i was quite the sensation on Facebook, maybe one day i will have the courage to share a singing video from back then, but really life was good then, by here, i had sort of accepted that i would have to do life for myself by myself, so i would be covers, rehearse for performances, and the whole shabang.

circa 2017, screenshot i could find from one of the covers i shared on IG

i’m sure by now you are wondering, so where did film and photography and writing get back into the mix? Let me tell you, walk with me. As a kid, back then in Ahoada, i had this guy who took me to church and taught in our Sunday school, what i didn’t know then was that years later in university, i would find him and he would be the spark that would begin my foray into photography and the subsequent birth of The Storyteller, his name? Caleb. So see, as a result of the talent group, i had a following in Uniport, i had built an audience around what i was at the time, and Caleb, starting a photography brand, needed me to bring people to snap, so i started out modeling and sharing on Facebook, influencer has entered the mix ooo, from bringing people and helping on set, i started playing with the camera and soon started taking pictures too, editing too.

I look back, and i would say the reason i was getting into all this was because i was looking for who i was, or who i lost, that 6 year old Bright, i was searching for him, and i am finding him, so in 2017, photography would become my heaven and earth, so much so i left the house my dad rented for me, and stayed a lot more in the studio, i would follow Caleb around for things like matriculations, convocations, events, name it, i was there, from being the record keeper and tag giver at matriculations to now editing to handling camera, it was quite the trajectory, but when i needed to still find my voice within photography, because, like you know now, i was that round peg being forced into a square box, so when i started introducing storytelling into my work, it was very different and i was not understood but i loved it anyway, and that’s when Odeyemi Michael Folorunsho, of blessed memory, would tell me, “bro, you are a storyteller,” and for the first time, i caught a full glimpse of who i was.

So, as i sit here on the cusp of 26 and reminisce on my journey, i cannot help but smile, because at every point in my journey that was riddled by isolation and the label “misfit,” was a kid finding expression really, and there is a version of this story that questions how i have gotten to the point where i can afford a life on my own, travel out of the country, be sought after for my gifts, because not so long ago, i was the guy who depended on his friend Nasiru for feeding money and clothes and shoes, so do not think all of this was facilitated by coming from a rich home, i did not, in fact there is a part in my early days in Uniport where i would be laughed at for my choice of shoes, my dad didn’t think it was necessary to get me new shoes, so he gave me his old runners, and i wore them proudly oo, but they laughed at me, today, i look at a full rack of shoes, a full wardrobe of fairly expensive clothes, a career that is promising, and a life that is getting beautiful, and maybe the answer to this question 6 year old Bright is asking is not that we got lucky, or that i got more hardworking, but that God has always been at every curve and turn, directing and guiding and orchestrating, just like he told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

this is 26

so if you're asking what evolution has looked like, 6 year old Bright, it looked like this: a camera in Caleb's studio before it was ever mine, then mine, in 2018, then somewhere along the way it stopped being about capturing beautiful things and started being about capturing necessary ones, yours and other people's both. it looked like leaving Port Harcourt for Lagos in 2024 with nothing guaranteed, and somehow building a commuinity here, out of the same restlessness that once had me sitting behind those iron bars watching everyone else's life happen. it looked like documentary work by 2022, and by then i wasn't the boy bringing bodies for someone else to shoot, i was the one deciding what deserved to be looked at, and why.

It has been slow, and it has not always looked like progress while it was happening, but every version of me, the modeling one, the record-keeper one, the storyteller one, was still just that same 6 year old, trying to be looked at properly, at least once. i think, finally, i am.

So, dearest 6 year old Bright, i think we can let go of hands now, not because i am done needing you, but because you finally get to watch, from wherever you are inside of me, instead of from behind a protector. happy birthday to us. and if you would like to gift us? please do, we need it. want to send money? 2152642154 UBA Basutor Bright, or not? here is a list of things that would make me happy