Settling Into Canada was Tougher Than Waiting for My PPR
Settling Into Canada was Tougher Than Waiting for My PPR
"In the first month, I was so homesick that I spoke to my mum every day."
I remember the exact moment I knew I wanted to leave Nigeria.
I was 14 or 15. I can still picture myself in Queens College —a secondary school in Lagos, Nigeria — decked in my blue skirt and lovingly ironed shirt, sitting with my friends in SS1P and planning how we would all leave at the end of SS3.
So, imagine my surprise when my parents told me I was attending a Nigerian university after my final exams.
Who? Me? Same me? When everyone in my clique was already chilling abroad. So I told myself, "I’m going to fail my first year of Uni so that my parents see that I don’t belong here.”
Spoiler alert: My plans failed. If anything, I passed a bit too well.
After I finished University, I started considering immigrating to the UK because of its proximity to Nigeria. Then, I met a “man” through my close friends. And everything changed.
He goes, “There’s something hot called Canada PR, and I think we should do it.”
In my head, I was like, let’s take it slow and steady. I’m the type of person who doesn’t panic if news about something is flying around — and during that period, everyone was screaming about Canada.
Can I tell you a secret? Nothing is urgent for me except if someone is dying or I have exams. And the Canadian PR news was no different. So, please tell me why this new man I had just started seeing offered to run the process for both of us.
I know what you’re thinking: Dating for papers? Or love bombing?
Luckily, it was neither of the above. Firstly, I had prayed to God to give me a partner who would be both a friend and a stand-up person, and I had seen from the get-go that he ticked the box. Since we were friends before we started dating, I knew he was reliable and incredibly selfless.
Secondly, my mum liked him. During the early stages, she once said that if we ended up being serious, we could pursue Canada together, so that was a big vote of confidence.
Lastly, they just didn’t born him well enough to up and leave me. I guess you can say that I trusted my instincts, and they were right.
Planning together was the “easy” step, but you see the execution?
That almost killed me. I went from being a big girl who used to splurge on food to constantly saying there’s rice at home. I also started checking the price of things, which I never did before. Honestly, the fear of Proof of Funds is the beginning of wisdom.
As our relationship progressed and marriage loomed, we had two options:
A) have a wedding and not rent an apartment.
B) rent an apartment and not host a wedding.
This was a big decision at the time because we had submitted our documents and were waiting for feedback from IRCC. We knew they could call us anytime but didn't know when. We were in this in-between place where we couldn’t make concrete life plans.
What if we rented an apartment and they called us the next week? What would we sell? We possibly couldn’t sell at the same price we bought things.
So we went with the first option because celebrating our wedding day with our amazing friends made more sense. We would then stay with my parents until the golden email from Canada came through.
Let me tell you something — it was tough. After the wedding, I'd go to work, and people would ask about our new house. In my mind, I’d be thinking, why are you asking? Are you coming to visit us? Worse still, our decision looked pretty stupid to some who knew about it. But we had a goal that needed the bulk money, and we weren’t going to be swayed by “what will people say.” Not to mention that the exchange rate was not funny then; let me not even start with it now.
I learned so many things during that period, but my biggest takeaway was that nobody is coming to save you.
You’re the adult now.
Another thing no one tells you about adulting is expectations can never match reality. Nothing drums home this fact like the day we received our Canada visas. At first, we were happy because all our sacrifices hadn’t been in vain. Also, we would finally have our own space and a very belated honeymoon celebration.
But that happiness quickly turned bitter-sweet. For the first time in a long time, I was going to be separated from my family. As a family-oriented person, this didn’t sit well with me. It also didn’t help that I’m averse to change.
Looking back at that period, there’s no way I’d have survived without my partner, without his friendship, without the shared sense of responsibility, and without the jokes we made to get through that phase.
It’s funny now, but settling into Canada was tougher than waiting for our visa in Nigeria.
In the first month, I was so homesick that I spoke to my mum every day. She cried, I cried, we both crode.
Don’t even get me started on our house-hunting experience in Canada as a new immigrant. The summary is that Canada realtors will make you love Lagos house agents, and this is not something I ever thought I’d say out loud.
One realtor asked us to pay six months of rent upfront since we didn’t have a credit score and “immigrants come with a lot of money.” Mind you, the cash value of the six months rental was C$10,000. And she still talked like she was doing us a favor.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, someone else tried to scam us. We got a call from a random number showing us house photos.
His exact pitch was that he was an immigrant trying to help his fellow immigrants. As the conversation progressed, he asked us to pay for a “key deposit” before viewing the house. That was when my alarm bells started ringing that he was trying to scam us. Imagine someone trying to defraud a whole me from Nigeria?
Rubbish!
We were back to square one after leaving the C$10K realtor and the scammer. Even worse was that we had two weeks left where we were staying. Every day was a calculation on what to do, who to talk to, where to look, plenty of prayers, and how to conserve dwindling funds.
Look, man, call it luck, faith, providence, or a miracle, but exactly one week till our moving-out date, we found the best house ever. It was bigger, more comfortable, and cheaper than everything we had seen.
The best part was that the landlord had chosen us — without credit scores and jobs — over those who had these things. His reason was that he liked our vibe and banter as a couple, plus he had Nigerian neighbors who had made a good impression on him. God bless those people wherever they are.
Moving in was a different rollercoaster on its own.
Since we landed in Canada in July and got the apartment in August, we weren’t ready to furnish it. After all, it was just the two of us, and we weren’t expecting any visitors. At least not yet. We just got ourselves a bed and a few household items here and there.
Can I confess something else? We didn’t have a chair and table for the longest time. During interviews, we’d turn over a dustbin, put our laptops on it, and sit on the floor to appear like we had a chair. We’d now wear an office shirt to complete the charade.
There was also the fact that I had never lived alone before, so buying spoons and pots was a new experience.
It was a wake-up call because I didn't know people bought these things.
You mean people buy curtains? They don't come with the house? Those were new experiences, but they made me understand that this is real life. This is my own generation beginning.
By September, it became clear that my options in the job market were limited.
At that point, my partner and I started weighing our pros and cons. We eventually decided that I’d go to school for more education while he’d work to support the house.
Here’s where things got interesting: the course I wanted to study had several exams, and the first part was coming up in January of the following year. Most people registered for the exam one year before the date, so they had ample time to study. But here I was, registering for the exam in September and on the deadline day.
Without my husband’s encouragement, affirmation, and belief, I would never have attempted such a thing.
Marathon classes started in September, and I had to attend as many as five classes daily, from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. I’d wake up in the morning with just enough time for breakfast, and it'd be dark everywhere when I came up for air.
In Nigeria, all I ever did was go to work and back. Now, I had life-defining exams in front of me, and the stakes were very high. It was hell!
I was constantly asking who send me message. Thankfully, my partner was encouraging. When I started classes, he [finally] bought a table and chair. Then he'd go out of his way to satisfy my food cravings: Amala, check. McDonald, double-check.
At that point, I knew I had to pass my exams. After the results came out in February, and I passed, I was like, yay, then I immediately started preparing for another one.
While preparing for the second exam, I had other upskilling training, driving tests, and tiny exams here and there.
Then the biggest exam came: pregnancy.
Wow! Talk about not being prepared. If the stakes were high before, pregnancy raised them ten times higher. With only one income running the house and a child on the way, there was even more pressure to get things right.
I remember telling my husband about my pregnancy. There was this very “what we have done silence,” almost followed by panicking. But I had to say to him that whatever he was feeling mentally, I also felt mentally and physically.
I told him, “Please help me here.”
He was in fight-or-flight mode for a while but eventually came around. On the other hand, I was handling the pregnancy well. I was reliant on providence that everything would turn out fine in the end. When we first came to Canada, my husband was the stand-up guy sorting out where to work, what to do for work, and how to navigate our new homeland. But the roles changed when I got pregnant, and I stepped up and took charge — different phases required us to play different roles.
I know I sound like a tough guy, but pregnancy was harrrddd. I was always sleeping off mid-sentence in class. At some point, I had swollen feet, sore back, and all the nuances that come with pregnancy.
I wrote the final exam at 36 weeks, two weeks before my delivery date. I had contractions in the exam hall, and I was so scared that the baby would pop out. When the pressure became overwhelming, I started praying to God in my mother tongue, and I didn’t even speak my language that well. I was just desperate.
After the exam, I wasn’t confident, so I came out begging God to pass. If not for my sake, for the sake of the child, I couldn't repeat this process.
Then, the waiting started. One week turned into two weeks to three weeks. Finally, when the results came, I was nervous. When I opened it and saw that I had passed, my husband burst into a dance because we suffered for this result.
Did I mention that we had to move provinces after my last paper? We moved partially because of job opportunities and partially because our house had a no-child policy. As we were waiting for results, we were also dealing with house hunting in a new city, plus finding where to deliver our baby.
During all of this, I realized how much I had changed. In Nigeria, I was always scared — I am still afraid — but I discovered a hidden strength I didn’t know I had in Canada. From moving cities to studying to pregnancy, I found capacity within me.
Eventually, when our baby came, I had to step up again. Since I had only my husband and no extended family support, I found myself learning how to care for a newborn, something I had never done before. There’s no way I’d have managed such a situation alone if I were still in Nigeria; I’d have looked at you weirdly.
Motherhood has been a mixed bag.
I’ve had to deal with changing hormones and how that made me feel. I’ve also had to deal with the initial period where everyone focuses on the baby vs the mother, even though she has a million and one things to do. Initially, I was losing my mind because there was just so much to do, and I didn’t have a lot of help.
But thankfully, a conversation with my husband straightened everything. We agreed that we need to do more for each other. Ultimately, these kids will grow and leave us like we did to our parents. We've been more deliberate about each other lately, and it's bringing about that thing of if my spouse is happy, I'm happy.
Right now, I don't think there's anything we can't overcome together by God's grace. We've gotten to the stage where we're like, we die here. No matter what happens, we've gone through things that have cemented us as guys. We've seen each other do things that, in our wildest dreams, no one would have done for us.
A lot has changed between then and now, and we don't even realize the gravity. But one thing that has remained constant is that we both know we're a team — we’re locked in for life.
The best part is that this is just the beginning. We’re only just starting.
References:
Credits:
Writer: Yahaya Hassan Taiwo
Editor: Dozie Anyaegbunam
Immigrant: Anon