J Town Was A Church.

It started with a conversation—the kind that drifts in like harmattan dust and settles in places you didn’t know were exposed. Someone mentioned Jos—J Town—and suddenly I was seventeen again, standing at the gate of a church that no longer exists, wrapped in a sweater too thin for the morning cold.

Christ Academy. That was its name. Perched just off Ahmadu Bello Way, it was a church, yes, but also a theater of firsts. Now it’s gone—dismantled by time or indifference. I’m told there’s nothing there anymore, or maybe something worse: silence. But I still see it. I still feel the cracked tile under my feet, hear the wheezing speakers, smell the metallic tang of dust caught in the wind.

January in Jos is not what outsiders imagine. The sun disappears for days. Harmattan arrives like a prophecy—dry, cold, and relentless. The air itself becomes a blade. Your lips split. Your voice turns to smoke. The days look ghosted, drained of color. You move through it all like you're only partially there. Breath becomes visible. Time feels brittle.

That’s when I found my voice.

Literally. Singing was the one thing that made people stop and look at me—like really look. Their faces softened, their eyes widened. I became "that girl who sings." And for a while, it felt like a superpower. Like I could be safe as long as I was useful.

So I sang. I sang to survive. On stage. In church. In classrooms. I learned that beauty could be currency, and I spent it freely.

People didn’t really ask how I was—they clapped. And in the hollow between their applause and my silence, I grew dependent on the transaction. Conditional love. If I performed, I was loved. If I didn’t, I was invisible. That belief calcified inside me. It would take years to soften.

I became hyperaware of my posture, my tone, my timing. Praise songs. Worship. School assemblies. Even the way I cried had to be melodic, measured. I learned to sound okay long before I ever learned to be okay. And in the middle of all this was him—my first love, my first everything.

It bloomed in the shadow of the church. Between rehearsals, after services, during fasting when all we had was hunger and each other. It felt sacred and reckless. I was two people: the daughter my parents raised and the girl the city was slowly undoing.

He saw both. He wanted both.

At first, there were secret smiles in the choir loft, shared snacks, scripture written into texts like codes. His touch was hesitant, then certain. His attention wrapped around me like a shawl. It felt like love. I thought it was love.

But Jos doesn’t allow for stillness. Even in the cold, it pulses—through crowded markets with oranges stacked in pyramids, roadside stalls blinking with fake phone lights, taxis honking like war drums. And beneath the sound, the tension grew.

We started to unravel. I pulled back. He pushed harder. My voice, once something he praised, became a thing to control. Attention from others sparked jealousy. Independence felt like betrayal. The love that had once made me feel seen began to swallow me whole.

Inside my little student studio, time folded inward. The day I ended it, I thought there might be tears, maybe silence. Instead, something ancient and violent woke up in him.

He lifted me like a ragdoll. Slammed me against the wall hard enough to leave a scream behind. The neighbors came. He ran. They chased. And then he was gone.

Like the church, he vanished. Except for one email. An apology. Fifteen years late.

Now he is someone else—a husband, a father, an echo. He says he envies my life, but he doesn’t know the cost of it. He doesn’t know that I left pieces of myself in that city—buried in the dust, in the cold, in the girl I never got to finish being.

School, somehow, happened. I went. I passed. I did well, though I barely remember how. The days were a blur of uniforms, notebooks, and fog. I don’t remember my classmates’ names. I don’t remember most of the lessons. But I remember singing. I remember how it felt to be watched, to be wanted, to be temporarily enough.

It took years—therapy, solitude, a kind of grief—to realize how deeply I’d fused love with performance. How every relationship afterward carried a silent contract: I will give you beauty, brilliance, voice... please don’t leave.

For a long time, I kept singing for others. For approval. For applause. Even in healing spaces, I performed my pain. Made it palatable. Gave it shape and melody so people wouldn’t turn away.

It was only recently that I learned how to live without that deal. How to sing in private, just because. How to sit in silence and still feel worthy. To be loved for who I am when I’m not on stage. When I’m quiet. When I’m unsure. To feel whole without needing to be dazzling.

Some places don’t just change your scenery. They change you.

Jos was not a stop. It was a baptism and a burial.

And though the church is gone, I still carry the sermon.