When tomorrow comes, the storm will be over. Not the natural one, not the heavy clouds rolling across the sky, or the rain that slaps zinc roofs until they sing like restless drums. No, I mean the kind of storm that envelopes a person silently, that fills the mind with noise until the body sways like the leaves of a banana tree in harmattan breeze.

It is past midnight in Ojuelegba, and the street is alive in its own crooked way. Danfos still growl at junctions, dispatch riders speed past like impatient ghosts, and the red glow of suya stands paints the darkness. But inside my one-room apartment, the noise is different. My thoughts crash into each other like traders arguing over change in Balogun market.

I pace the room. There’s no resting for me tonight.

The storm began earlier in the evening, when my boss at the bank handed me a letter that carried only five words: “Your employment has been terminated.” No explanations, no gratitude for three years of loyalty. Just an outright dismissal wrapped in corporate politeness.

I walked home with the letter in my bag, but the real weight sat on my chest. Rent was due next month. My mother’s medical bills were still unpaid in Abeokuta. And there was Tinu, my younger sister, who looked to me for school fees. Everything suddenly balanced on nothing, like a tripod with only two legs remaining. 

Yet, the storm wasn’t just about the job. The storm was deeper. For 6  years, I had measured my worth by how early I clocked into the bank, how many targets I hit, and how loudly my supervisor praised me during morning briefings and quarterly appraisals. Now, stripped of that, I was naked in my own eyes.

I open the window and lean out. From here, I can see Mama Chika’s buka across the street, her lantern flickering as she serves night guards pepper soup. A part of me envies her. She doesn’t need a letterhead to survive. She doesn’t fear office politics or retrenchment. Every evening, she lights her stove, and customers come. 

The storm in my head hisses louder as I watch her. What if I never find another job? What if Lagos swallows me whole, like it has swallowed countless dreamers before me?

I sit on the floor, back against the wall, and I remember something my father once said before he died: “Storms don’t last. They only test if your roots are deep.” He was a farmer in Ogun State, always talking in parables. At the time, I didn’t understand. Tonight, his words return like a torch in darkness.

Still, the night is long. And I must wait.

Hours crawl. The power goes out, and the fan stops its lazy rotation. Sweat clings to my skin. Outside, a drunk man sings a Fuji song off-key, his laughter echoing like mockery. I close my eyes and whisper to myself, “When tomorrow comes, the storm will be over.”

But tomorrow, as I would later find, did not bring calm the way I expected.

At dawn, I step out to buy bread and akara from the roadside woman. My mind is heavy, but Lagos doesn’t stop for anybody. As I wait in line, a young boy in ragged shorts tugs at my sleeve. His eyes are hollow, but his voice is bold.

“Bros, buy akara for me.”

Normally, I would wave him off, like most people do. But something inside me softens. I give the woman extra money and tell her to serve him, too. The boy grins, showing the kind of joy no job can guarantee.

As we eat side by side on the wooden bench, he tells me his name is Samuel. He sleeps under the bridge with other children. He wants to be a mechanic one day, “because cars never finish for Lagos roads.”

I laugh for the first time since yesterday.

In that small exchange, something shifts. My storm is still there, but it no longer feels like it owns me. If this boy, with nothing but torn shorts and a dream, can smile at tomorrow, then maybe I can too.

Later that week, instead of job hunting the usual way, I returned to Mama Chika’s buka. I ask if she needs help with accounting, with managing her little business. At first, she laughs, thinking I’m joking. But when I explain how I can help track sales and reduce waste, she nods slowly.

“Okay, start small. We go see.”

That’s how my new chapter begins, not in an air-conditioned office, but in a buka filled with the smell of palm oil and the laughter of hungry customers. It’s humbler work, yes, but it is mine.

And as the days unfold, I learn that sometimes storms don’t clear away to give you back what you lost. Instead, they clear space for you to plant something new.

When tomorrow comes, the storm will be over. Not because the world changed, but because I learned to stand, even when swaying like the leaves of a banana tree.

And in Lagos, that is a victory on its own.