Good things take time

but the time will pass anyway.

TLDR: A case for knowing that making friends as an adult is hard, and it will take time. So suck it up and get to it.

Today is International Friendship Day, everywhere in the world and what better day for me to sit on my high horse and tell all other transplants how to make friends abroad. LOL, jk.

I’m actually the worst person to tell people how to make friends because I am what could be described as friendly but not easy to be friends with. And I agree with that description because while I’m friendly with many people I’ve had the great fortune of having the same friends that I met at Secondary school more than 20 years ago that continue to be in my life and show up for me daily, and then another set from university 15 years ago that I experienced most of the coming of age experiences that transform you from adolescent to adult - hopefully well adjusted- and then finally the last friendship group I made was at my first real grown up job, where I made life long friends with two girls because, check this, we were the only 3 people in that batch of trainees who owned a blackberry phone, ( and I know I’m probably dating myself seriously here) and the rest of the class quickly dubbed us “Black berry babes”. Long story short, I already had friends, making more wasn’t a priority for me.

I have obviously made other friends along the way but the point is that, for me making friends growing up wasn’t really intentional. My friends from secondary school were my house mates & class mates that I got along with, my friends from university were people who enjoyed skipping school to party as much as I did, grades be damned and my friends from my first job well, we had the same phone. Simply put I just liked these people, we got along and then we built a large enough friendship bank to survive so many of life curve balls together. And I’m talking Weddings, Divorces, Loss of Parents, Job Loss, Miscarriages. You name it. We have been through all of it.

So when I moved half way across the world, I was not prepared for how unmoored I’d be from the many different friendships I had relied on to keep my sanity in my crazy Lagos living life. After weeks of sulking, and the realization that a 9-hour time difference was definitely not going to help matters, I set out to make new friends in my new country.

Was it easy? No.

Did I enjoy the process? Also no.

Am I better for it? Yes. Okay Sometimes

Here is what I did, and what I’d suggest you do too if you are an immigrant.

So, I guess the first thing is to be intentional about the fact that you need to make friends. And if you are like most people, you’ll want the friendship to be seamless and easy but sorry immigrant friendships are hard won via many calendar appointments and back and forth confirmations and last minute cancellation because something always inevitably comes up. So just prepare your mind.

I reached out to the people I knew in Nigeria and had moved here, before I moved here to see if they wanted to hang out. I’ve only had one successful hang out from the almost 10 people I reached out to. And she was someone who I went to Secondary School with. I should actually message her to try to hang out again.

While I enjoyed that particular hang, I learned very quickly that making friends abroad takes a lot of intentionality. We had to reschedule a few times, and ended up hanging out during a public holiday. There is so much life happening as you get older that if you do not deliberately make time to build these friendships, you are going to wake up 4 weeks to your birthday party and find that you have no one who’d be willing to take a day off to follow you to the beach for your fake surprise birthday party that you planned for yourself by yourself.

You should be willing to shake the trees of your existing friendships to see who has mutuals that live in your city. In the same way the that enemy of your enemy is your friend, the friend of your friend could also be your friend too.

I think the second thing is to prepare to put yourself out there. And I do not mean going out and be weird, I mean that be willing to do things you have never done before. Because a new song from the drums of life deserves new dance steps. Get ready to go hiking, camping, and *insert something you swore you’d never do* - For me this was going to a Latino dance club and ending up on the Instagram page of the club :/.

You will also have to be ready to smile at people and make small talk. One of the loveliest babes I’ve met here happened to get on a bus I was on when I was characteristically late for school, we got talking and unbeknownst to me, she was having the worst day. Anyway we talked and talked and talked and now once a month, me her & my husband, see a movie because she has a movie membership thingy and she is such a huge movie buff.

The third thing and I think its really important, is to realize that people are going through it, so if your intuition thinks you should lean in- do it. Don’t be afraid that you are over doing it. Another of my really good friends here, I met her while I was house hunting and she ended up convincing us to take the flat. We did. Anyway, she lived close by so randomly I’d pop in to her place after work and as the weeks went on, I found that we both really enjoyed our hang out sessions, but I had no idea how much until one day she opened up to me, during one of my random drop ins that she lost her twin & it was the anniversary and she was in such a funk and me showing up really brightened her day. Meanwhile all I did was swing by after work because my mind kept telling me to go and see her. Mind you, I’d known this person for all of 5 weeks. Trust your intuition. We are all away from home, and many times it’s only people on the same journey that can understand what you are experiencing. So do not be afraid to lean into the friendship slightly earlier than normal. There are no timelines.

The fourth thing, accept that the new friends you make here will never be like your friends back home wherever you came from. They do not know you as well, so they probably don’t understand your little quirks about never picking up the phone. While your friends back home will accept you are late all the time because it is who you are, and not because you do not respect their time. Your new friends here, it might take them some getting used to. So, you will need to find a better excuse than “that’s just the way I am”. Also people are just different in different countries. Accepting this will make your friendship search easier.

While this might not be the final thing, this is important to note, because you are no longer 12 years old, you will have to make friends strategically. Yes, you need to find people who have attained what you are trying to achieve when you decided to move half way across the world and learn from them. And quickly too. If you want to work in a particular industry, it’s in your best interest to find people in that space and begin to engage with them via LinkedIn and work your way into building a suitable relationship that allows you learn from their journey and get reliable answers quicker than figuring things out on your own.

A bonus thing to do, or not to do when trying to make friends as an immigrant is to not compete with people with whom you are trying to be friends with. There is a tendency for immigrants to be in a phase of the journey where scarcity might attempt to warp your mind and you begin to compete with people you, who you should be collaborating with on your journey in the new country. If you find yourself in this situation take a step back and realize that immigration journeys are different for every single person. They are a function of time, luck and existing policies or changing policies that happen arbitrarily. So celebrate with your new friends, more often than not, your own win is around the corner. And even if it isn’t friendships with collaborations are way more rewarding.

In addition to the above, you’ll need to do the same things you have always done for your friends back home, show up when needed, be generous, not just with money, but with your time and benefit of doubt- because you are new friends, so much context of who they and why they are the way they are are can only be provided with time, inconvenience your self to spend time with them, side bar, when I went to DC, my friend rode the train for 7 hours to come see me for a few hours. I felt so so loved.

Remember that building friendships is a time consuming venture, but good things take time and the time will pass anyway, so the choice is yours, you can hold on tightly to the friendships that geography has put fissures in, or you can accept the new challenge of making friends as an adult. An added advantage is that somehow it makes your older friendships sweeter since you are not fuming every time you call your friend in Lagos at 2am her time to rant but she is four bottles of Rose deep at Zaza and can’t hear you wailing over Burnaboy singing about being a city boy. Just to be clear, this hasn’t happened to me- I’m just saying.

If all of the above seem too stressful for you, you can always pay $99 USD for one of these.

The one thing that has made me so happy in recent times, NIKOSSS LIVIN’. I came across Nikosbabii during #Chivido, If you know, you know and I have been obsessed, all the way dialed in to her vlogs. I enjoy her friendship with her cousins, and her general zest for life is refreshing to see from some someone who creates content online. I think something about being American combined with her personality makes her the ideal content creator. Infact, her lukewarm boyfriend reveal just lets me know that her giving herself plausible deniability - because she has neither confirmed nor denied it- is someone who is really just living life. Right now its Nike’s world and she is living it up. I particularly don’t enjoy influencer content creators because its always so obvious that they are trying to sell something but for now, I’m locked in to NikossBabii.

Ointment and perfume delight the heart, And the sweetness of a man’s friend gives delight by hearty counsel. Do not forsake your own friend or your father’s friend, Nor go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity; Better is a neighbor nearby than a brother far away.

Proverbs 29:9-10