By Dr. Sunday Alaba Fawole & Atinuke Fawole, Esq.
PROLOGUE
The Question That Demands an Answer
In December 2025, after thirty-eight years of sojourning in the United States, my wife Atinuke and I made a decision that has left many in our circle bewildered. We are retiring from our practices in Georgia—my dual practice in dentistry and family medicine, her distinguished career as a criminal law attorney advocating for children and families—to return home to Nigeria.
The questions come at us from all directions, laced with genuine concern and, sometimes, barely concealed disbelief:
“After nearly four decades, you’re leaving the comfort and predictability of America?”
“Have you seen the news? Banditry, terrorism, kidnapping, economic hardship—why would you subject yourselves to that at your age?”
“You’ve built a life here. Your children are here. Your grandchildren are here. What is left for you in Nigeria?”
These are fair questions. They deserve an honest answer. And for us, that answer is rooted deeply in the Yoruba ethos that shaped our childhoods in our Yoruba heritage and has guided every step of our journey across three decades of building a life in the United States.
This is our story—a testimony to the prayer our ancestors prayed over us before we left, and our ultimate response to that prayer.
The Prayer That Carried Us
When we left Nigeria in the late 1980s, we were young, hopeful, and terrified. We carried little in our suitcases but carried everything in our hearts: the faces of our parents, the blessings of our elders, and the weight of a specific prayer that was spoken over us as we departed.
“E o ko ere oko de ile.”
“You will return home with the harvest of the farmland.”
We did not fully understand the depth of that prayer then. We heard it as a simple blessing—a wish for success and safe return. But looking back across over thirty-eight years, through every triumph and every tragedy, we now understand that this prayer was not just a farewell. It was a prophecy. It was a compass. And it was a contract.
The prayer acknowledged that we were leaving for the “farm”—the foreign land where the soil is hard but the potential harvest is great. It acknowledged that the journey would be dangerous, filled with the risks of loss, distraction, and even death. But it anchored our departure to an inevitable conclusion: return.
We did not know then that this prayer would carry my wife, Atinuke, through three years of nursing school that eventually fetched us our green cards after six years of stay. It carried me through my Master’s in Public Health, through two clinical residency trainings in Advanced General Dentistry, through the grueling process of earning my license to practice in the United States and later returning to medical school to becoming board certified Family Physician with rare privilege of dual qualifications. It carried Atinuke through law school, through a decade as a prosecuting attorney, through her evolution into a fierce advocate for children caught in the juvenile justice system.
The prayer was there when we thrived, and it was there when we were barely surviving.
The Scars We Carry
No harvest comes without labor, and no labor comes without wounds.
In December of 2022, we buried our thirty-year-old son. He went in for a routine tonsillectomy and didn’t survive it. There are no words in any language—Yoruba, English, or the language of the heart—to describe the weight of that loss. To this day, we carry the scars. They are invisible to those who see us smiling in photographs, but they are as real as the air we breathe.
There were also health challenges—our own bodies betraying us at times, reminding us that we are not as young as we once were, that the journey has taken its physical toll. Surgeries. Recoveries. The slow, humbling process of learning that we are mortal.
Yet through it all, we never lost sight of the prayer. The harvest was not just for us. It was never just for us.
THE HARVEST WE GATHERED
When people look at our journey, they often see the degrees and the titles: Dr. Sunday Fawole, dual-qualified physician and dentist. Atinuke Fawole, Esq., criminal law attorney. They see the nonprofit we founded. They see the annual medical missions to underserved communities in Southwest Nigeria that we have sustained for twenty years.
But the true harvest is not on our résumés. The true harvest is what we learned, what we became, and what we now have to give back.
The Harvest of Intellectual Capital
America gave us something invaluable: world-class training in our respective fields. But more than that, it gave us the opportunity to see how systems can work when they are designed to serve people. I learned medicine and dentistry in a system that, despite its flaws, prioritizes continuous improvement, accountability, and evidence-based practice. Atinukek learned law in a system that, at its best, fights for the most vulnerable with every tool available.
We did not acquire this knowledge to make ourselves comfortable. We acquired it because we knew—because the prayer reminded us—that we would one day bring it home.
The Harvest of Ethical Standards
One of the most profound gifts of our sojourn has been the reinforcement of values that were actually first planted in us in Nigeria: integrity, diligence, and the belief that every person deserves dignity. In America, we saw these values operationalized in ways that sometimes surprised us. We saw how systems could be built to minimize corruption, to reward merit, and to hold the powerful accountable.
We bring these ethical standards home not as criticism of what is lacking, but as tools for building what could be.
The Harvest of Networks
Over thirty-eight years plus, we have built relationships across the United States—with colleagues, with mentors, with institutions, with communities. These relationships are not just personal; they are bridges. When we return to Nigeria, we do not return empty-handed. We return connected to a global network of expertise, resources, and goodwill that can be leveraged for the benefit of our people.
The Harvest of Resilience
Perhaps the most important harvest is the one forged in fire. The loss of our son taught us that life is fragile and precious. The health challenges taught us that every day is a gift. The decades of hard work taught us that persistence is its own reward.
We carry these lessons not as burdens, but as fuel.
The Question of Comfort
And so we return to the question: Why leave the comfort and predictability of America?
Let us be honest: America is comfortable. After thirty-eight years, we have built a life there. We have routines. We have Medicare. We have the convenience of knowing how everything works. We have our surviving children and our grandchildren, whose physical touch we will not embrace as often as we would like. Thankfully, we can still behold their faces as often as we want to using social media and technology.
Nigeria, by contrast, is not comfortable. The news is filled with stories that would make anyone hesitate. Banditry. Kidnapping. Economic instability. Political uncertainty. Our friends and colleagues look at us with genuine concern, wondering if we have lost our minds.
But comfort was never the point of the prayer.
The prayer was not “E o gbádùn oko” — “You will enjoy the farmland.” The prayer was “E o ko ere oko de ile” — “You will return home with the harvest.”
The farmland is for working. The home is for building.
We did not spend thirty-eight years in America to die in America. We spent thirty-eight years in America to gather what we needed to bring back to the place that made us. The farmland was fertile, and we are grateful. But the home is where the harvest belongs.
The Work That Awaits
We are not returning to Nigeria to rest. We are returning—as we have told our children and friends—to “re-tool with new tires.” The work continues.
Through Optimum Families, the organization Atinuke and I co-founded, we will continue the work we have been doing for years: coaching and counseling families, marriages, and young adults preparing for marriage. We have seen too many families fracture under the pressures of modern life. We have seen too many children grow up without the anchor of strong, loving homes. The principles that held Yoruba families together for generations are not obsolete; they are more needed than ever.
Through our nonprofit, we will expand our medical missions. For twenty years, we have been coming annually to underserved communities in Southwest Nigeria, providing care to those who would otherwise go without. Now we will be there year-round, not just as visitors but as residents, able to build the kind of sustained relationships that annual visits cannot achieve.
And Atinuke has written a book. Drawing on her years in the juvenile court system, she has documented the immigration and generational gaps that channel young people—both in America and in Nigeria—into the pipeline to prison. She brings this knowledge home not as an academic exercise, but as a tool for intervention. If we can reach young people before the system swallows them, we can change trajectories. We can save lives.
The Danger of Forgetting
Our decision is not just personal. It is, we hope, a message.
There is a danger in our generation—the generation of Nigerians who left in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s—of forgetting. Of getting so comfortable in the farmland that we forget there is a home. Of raising children who know the names of American presidents but not the names of their own ancestral towns. Of sending money back, yes, but not sending ourselves back.
The result is visible across Nigeria: towns and villages growing desolate, lacking the infrastructure and investment that only returned sons and daughters can provide. Development cannot be outsourced entirely. It cannot be achieved by remittances alone. It requires presence. It requires the physical return of the harvest—not just the money, but the knowledge, the standards, the networks, the passion.
The Creator who made us products of the Southwest Yoruba States, did not make a mistake. The ancestors who prayed over us did not waste their breath. We are who we are because of where we come from. And where we come from is calling.
A Word to Our Fellow Sojourners
To every Nigerian in the diaspora reading this, we say: We understand. We understand the fear. We understand the comfort of staying. We understand the rationalizations—”I can serve better from abroad,” “My children are here,” “Nigeria is too dangerous.”
We have made those same arguments to ourselves over the years. We have delayed this return again and again, always finding a reason to wait just a little longer.
But we are here to tell you: the prayer is still active. The harvest you have gathered—whether it is a degree, a skill, a network, a perspective, or simply the resilience you have built through years of hard work—that harvest belongs to your people. It belongs to your home.
You do not have to return permanently. You do not have to do what we are doing. But you must return something. You must find a way to bring the harvest home—through investment, through mentorship, through advocacy, through partnership. The farmland has been good to you. Do not let the home die while you prosper abroad.
The Compass Points Home
There is a Yoruba proverb that says, “Ile la ti n ko eso r’ode” — “It is from home that we learn how to behave outside.” Or, “it is from home we export treasured values.” For thirty-eight years, we carried the lessons of home with us. They guided our choices, shaped our values, and kept us grounded through every storm.
Now it is time to bring the lessons of outside back home.
The political instability? We have seen systems work; we can help build systems that work.
The economic hardship? We have resources and networks; we can invest in solutions.
The security challenges? We have lived through uncertainty before; we are not easily frightened.
We are resolute. We will not cower down under the weight of our common challenges but together we will face them squarely in solidarity until victory unfolds, one sector at a time. That is not a risk but a privilege.
The prayer our ancestors prayed over us is finally being answered. The circle is closing. The harvest is coming home.
E o ko ere oko de ile.
We are bringing it now.
EPILOGUE
An Invitation
We are the Fawoles, Sunday Alaba Fawole and Atinuke Oludolapo Fawole. We are slightly visible on social media and can be easily reached. We do not claim to have all the answers, and we do not presume to tell anyone else what their journey should look like.
But if our story resonates with you—if you feel the pull of home, if you wonder what your own harvest might look like, if you are searching for a way to connect your sojourn abroad to the destiny of your people—we would be honored to connect with you.
The farmland is vast, and the laborers are many. But the home is waiting. The home is always waiting.
We have returned home. We are no longer visiting.