Evi Edna Ogholi - No Place Like Home May 2026

The Echo of Red Earth

Lagos, 2026. Then Port Harcourt, 1994.

“Auntie Ebiere!” one of them shouted. “Is it true you used to live in a glass house in the sky?” Evi Edna Ogholi - No Place Like Home

That girl was her.

She looked out at the children playing in the red mud. They were laughing. Their feet were dirty. Their bellies were full. The Echo of Red Earth Lagos, 2026

An old woman emerged from a hut. Mama Patience. She had been the village midwife. She squinted, then her toothless mouth opened in a gasp.

The air in Lagos tasted of rust and gasoline. Ebiere knew this because she had just licked her cracked lips after a dusty okada ride from Ojuelegba. At thirty-four, she was a senior analyst for a multinational oil firm—a woman in a blazer who spoke with a clipped British accent she’d acquired at a boarding school in Surrey. “Is it true you used to live in a glass house in the sky

She stayed for seven days. She helped Mama Patience mend the church roof. She taught the children how to read using a torn newspaper she found in her bag. She drank palm wine from a calabash. She slept on the floor.