Can We Really Touch Grass?

My best friend just left Lagos. She'd been job hunting for months, racing the clock because her contract with her old company was ending, and Lagos wasn't giving her anything close to what she wanted. Then, through what we would usually call ‘connect’, she got a job far away in Port Harcourt. I wasn’t exactly surprised when she told me because she’s always had a strong network in PH. Her family is like old-money sort of, the type that the “good name” has surpassed the funds.

Anyways, Port Harcourt came through, and it was a role in an oil and gas firm. This was way better than anything she'd been offered in her life- a 7-figure salary, and it was a no-brainer; she was leaving. I was happy for her and heartbroken for myself in the same breath. So we, as a squad, did what we do: we threw her a send-off. A pool party at 21 Bistro in Lekki - our very spot, the place this friend group has treated as its base for almost a year now. Music, games, swimming, food, the whole set-up for one last good day together before she became a person I'd only see on video calls.

I walked in late because I was coming from the mainland, after a crazy day at work. So I just wanted to get there, get a glass of Captain’s Blood, one of their signature cocktails. It’s my favorite because it honestly lifts my spirit. I was just really ready to soak up (literally because I hadn’t swum in ages) every last minute of my best friend in Tibubu’s city. To my surprise on getting there, I looked around, and almost everyone was on their phone. Heads down, thumbs moving, half-smiling at screens instead of at each other. I got angry, honestly. This was supposed to be our day, the last real one, and here we all were, physically together and mentally somewhere else entirely. I remember thinking, with real irritation, that this generation needs to touch grass. I started thinking about how the internet was ruining our ability to be present, how we've traded real connection for notifications, the whole rant.

While I was processing this, I stylishly peeped into someone’s phone, and he was on Facetime with his brother who was preparing for his wedding in Australia. Then I remembered he had mentioned to me about a week ago that he had barely heard from his brother for a while because the groom-to-be had been very occupied - packing work shifts to be able to get enough funds for the wedding and to set up his new family. Plus time zone wahala. The anger in me started to reduce because then it hit me, sitting there fuming: I didn't actually know what everyone was doing on those screens, and honestly, it probably wasn't all mindless scrolling.

Half of us in that friend group already have someone who's ‘Japa'd’ or relocated - a sibling in Canada, a friend who left for the UK. It's more likely than not that some of those phones were open to a video call or a group chat with exactly those people, because staying in each other's lives now runs through a screen by default. The phones probably weren't taking anyone away from the moment. They were just doing what they now quietly do every day: hold together relationships that distance would otherwise let slip.

Honestly, before this party, I was gearing up to write on how japa, or just moving to another state for a better job like my friend just did, is quietly hollowing out our friend groups and families. That part is still true. It is happening, faster than I think we're willing to admit. But what I saw at that party complicated the story I wanted to tell. The same phones I was ready to blame for disconnecting us were the only reason half the people we'd already lost to relocation still felt like they belonged to us at all. Touch grass, sure. But for a country losing so many people to elsewhere, the phone has quietly become the grass. It's where the connection now lives, because the physical proximity that used to hold us together isn't guaranteed anymore.

I think about it now, and I'm less angry and more unsettled. Something is being lost, that much I'm sure of - the kind of friendship that survives on being in the same room, that doesn't need a screen. My best friend and I have been proximity friends for years; I don't yet know what we'll become once that's gone, and all we have between us are two phones. But I also can't pretend the phones are the villain of this story anymore. At that party, they were doing exactly what phones are supposed to do when everything else about our lives keeps scattering us across states and countries; they were the last thread holding people together who geography had already pulled apart.

I still went home from that party a little sad. My friend is gone from Lagos now, building a new life in Port Harcourt, and I'm here trying to figure out what our friendship looks like at a distance.

Here's the part I keep coming back to: she was always the one who kept this friendship group physically together. She was the one calling people, fixing dates, making sure we actually showed up in the same room at 21 Bistro instead of just talking and sharing reels in the group chat. Now that she's the one who's left, I genuinely don't know if this group will still meet up in person the way it used to, or if our beloved hangout spot quietly stops being ours. What I do know is the conversations won't stop; they'll just move entirely onto our phones. And if that night taught me anything, it's that phones are already good at holding a friendship together from a distance. We're about to find out if ours can run on that alone.