Mississippi Transplant: Saddiq Dzukogi

"I feel a deep sense of belonging, comfort, and connection to Mississippi—there is an ancestral energy here that has been calling out to me, and still calls to me for understanding."

What does it mean to call Mississippi home? Why do people choose to leave or live in this weird, wonderful, and sometimes infuriating place? Originally from Minna, Nigeria, poet Saddiq Dzukogi moved to Nebraska at age twenty-nine to pursue his doctorate in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While there, he published his first book of poetry, Your Crib, My Qibla. In 2022, Saddiq relocated with his family to Starkville to teach at Mississippi State University. Though he laments the lack of sidewalks (“The sidewalk is an intimate space of creation…”), he finds Mississippi to be fertile ground for his writing practice. “There's something about the essence of Mississippi that fosters creativity. I believe more people should come here and immerse themselves in the creative energy that flows through this land.” Today, Saddiq tells us what it’s been like to create a home in Mississippi.

Featured contributor Saddiq Dzukogi now lives in Starkville, MS.

Where are you from?

This would have been a complicated question before arriving in America, a day after my twenty-ninth birthday in 2018. But I can say that I am from the place where my people are from, which is not clear, but the place that they are now calling home. Minna, in the middle of Nigeria. Although before leaving Nigeria, I was living in Kaduna, which is about three hours from Minna. It is the place I dream of and think of as home.

When did you move to Mississippi and why did you move here?

I relocated to Mississippi in August 2022 to assume a teaching position at Mississippi State University. However, it's fair to say that my affinity for catfish played a role in my decision as well. During my job interview, a faculty member suggested trying the catfish at Georgia Blues, which greatly influenced my decision to accept the job offer when it arrived in February 2022.

What does “home” mean to you? How does Mississippi fit into that definition?

For a very long time, home was not a physical location for me. It was a space of comfort. Which could be a simple moment that is perhaps not rooted in any physicality but just a feeling. But this quickly changed for me when I left my country, Nigeria—all of a sudden home meant a physical presence of all the things I have taken for granted. Home meant familiar music of cawing birds on a mango branch in Minna, home meant harmattan and not frigid Nebraska winter, it meant stories that my grandmother told me as a child. It meant the paths I walked as a child, the playground, my friends, the dusty earth of Minna, where we played football for hours. But I have had such emotional reaction to going back to Nebraska after spending more than a year in Mississippi. And I then realized that, for the first time, that my sensibilities recognize Lincoln, Nebraska, as home. My memories too. How couldn’t I? My two kids were born there.

Mississippi was among the first places I knew of as a kid growing up in Nigeria. I sang of the Mississippi River—and in some ways I believed that river has lured me here. I feel a deep sense of belonging, comfort, and connection to Mississippi—there is an ancestral energy here that has been calling out to me, and still calls to me for understanding. Calls to me to learn the history of this place. Home to me is the place where I make memories. It is also about the people, experiences that shape my sensibility as a person. And I will say Mississippi does this in ways that I did not anticipate before coming here. Overall, Mississippi has become a significant part of my life journey and embodies many aspects of what I consider home.

Saddiq reads from his book, Your Crib, My Qibla.

What do you miss most about the place where you’re from?

I miss everything, but mostly the sound of the muezzin, blaring out of the rusty speakers hanging on the minarets of mosques. It is a chorus of call to prayer from the multiple mosques in the city. I miss the food. I miss harmattan, the smell of ripening cashew and mangoes in the air. I miss my mother. I miss it all.