Post by Adesanya Ayotola (@adesanya_ayotola)

THE ORCHARD WE LEFT UNWATERED

There was a time when this land remembered its own name. The rivers did not ask the sea for permission to flow. The trees did not envy foreign forests. The winds carried the laughter of builders and every sunrise found hands already at work, teaching stone how to become cathedrals.

Then, somehow, the compass forgot the language of north.

Not in a single storm, nor by one violent night but by the quiet surrender of one neglected garden after another. A gate left open. A foundation left unchecked. A lamp left to exhaust its oil. Until weeds learned our anthem better than wheat.

Now we stand in distant orchards, marveling at fruit that grows on trees whose seeds were once carried from our own soil. We celebrate the harvest elsewhere, forgetting that the roots still whisper our names. Yet a seed never truly escapes its tree.

It carries, within its silent heart, the memory of the forest and perhaps that is our calling. Not merely to bloom where we are planted but to become orchards ourselves. To scatter seeds with deliberate hands.
To teach them the patience of oak trees, the resilience of baobabs, the humility of rivers that carve mountains without ever raising their voices.

For nations are not rebuilt by monuments. They are rebuilt by gardeners. By those who kneel in forgotten soil while others search for greener fields. By those who understand that every child mentored, every mind awakened, every institution strengthened, every standard defended, is another seed refusing to negotiate with drought.

The tragedy was never that the rain stopped.

It was that we forgot we had become the clouds.
So let us gather again. Not as wanderers ashamed of the earth beneath our feet but as keepers of forgotten seeds. Let us become rain before we ask why the harvest has failed.

For a nation does not resurrect because someone dreams of tomorrow. It rises when enough people remember that they were always meant to become forests.

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