I always knew that the word ‘homesick' was associated with longing but I had never felt it until I was 21.

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I was raised to be an independent child. From the tender age of 13, I was enrolled in a boarding school. I was the only child who agreed to attend a boarding school during my secondary education.

When I graduated from secondary school, l literally began to live alone because my mom worked at a hotel where she had to leave the house for 2 weeks and return for just a week.

I had been programmed to be self-sufficient at a tender age while being around my family for some time so I never knew what it meant to yearn for someone you truly had an attachment with until my sister had my niece.

I was in class that evening when my phone suddenly rang loudly. Fortunately, the lecturer didn't seem pissed about it so I pressed the power button to silence the tune and then switched my phone off once it stopped ringing.

At the end of the class when I switched my phone on again, I saw that it was my mom who called. I hurried over to get my bag and then placed a call across on my way back home, apologizing for not taking her call.

“That's okay,” she sounded very excited. “Has your sister called you?”

I told her no.

“Ah, call her o! She just gave birth to a bouncing baby girl”

I let out an excited squeal forgetting that I was on the road. Heads turned towards my direction and some people even shifted away from me but I didn't mind. There was no one who would receive the news I just did and remained calm.

“But don't call her now,” my mom warned as if she knew that I was already making plans to call my sister when she dropped that call. “I'll ask her to call you when she's awake”

For the rest of that day, I couldn't concentrate on the two assignments I had to do. I kept running to my phone to check if my sister had called back until I dozed off.

The call came in a few minutes past 9 pm.

“Big sis, congratulations!”

“Thank you, Treasure. I was thinking you could come over to stay with me for some time. Mummy is leaving next weekend and I will need some assistance with the baby”

I just became an aunty, how could I refuse? So I packed up what I felt was really necessary and headed over to my sister's house that weekend.

When I first set eyes on the baby, she was a tiny white bundle all wrapped up and laid in her cot, snoring softly. The way my heart softened causing a wide smile to climb my face, I knew that I had developed an unbreakable bond with her.

It was two weeks later that the academic staff union of universities decided to embark on an indefinite strike so the stay in my sister's house was automatically extended.

Every morning when I woke up, I made a bottle of warm milk and fed it to my niece while my sister prepared her husband for work. When I was done, I tied the baby to my back, singing and dancing as I went about chores in the house so my sister could prepare and head to work as well.

I did this every day till the strike was called off unexpectedly 8 months later.

I didn't go back to school when the strike was called off, I had to stay back with my sister for a while so that she could devise a means to handle her job and her baby. Eventually, I returned to my apartment outside school a week after the strike was called off.

The next morning I woke up at 6 am to prepare a bottle of milk for my niece then discovered she was not there with me. There was no one to babble my name or tug at my trousers when I was at the kitchen sink doing the dishes. My house was completely silent and empty. Even after going back home, I didn't want to attend any classes yet.

The following morning, I woke up at 6 am again and this time, I was having a throbbing pain in my head. By the following morning, I was weak and shivering.

I called my mom to talk to her about the symptoms I was having so she could prescribe drugs for me since she worked at a clinic sometime in the early stages of her life but instead of telling me what drug I could use, she began asking me questions about my sister.

“When was the last time you called your sister?”

It was the day I arrived at my house so I told her.

“Call her. Her baby too is having the same symptoms, it's possible you both are homesick”

True to my mother's words, my sister said that her baby fell sick immediately after I left the house, so I packed up my things and went back to her house that weekend.

I made it a point of duty to visit my sister's house every weekend from then until she eventually moved with her family to Port Harcourt.

As time went on, I could stay for weeks without seeing my niece and nothing happened. Now, I make sure I call my sister twice a week to speak to my niece. So far, my niece is the only one who has made me know what it means to feel homesick and till now, I've never had such an experience with anyone else except her.