Announcer: Hey, just a warning before we get started: this episode of Resistance deals with some heavy themes and has some strong language in it. We'll get started right after this short break.

***

Saidu Tejan Thomas, Jr.: Hey, what's good, y'all? Saidu here. So this week on the show, I'm bringing you a story that's very close to my heart. It's a story about my mother. It's called Borders Between Us, and it won Best Documentary Silver at this year's Third Coast Awards. I'm low-key very hype about that.

Saidu: And I want to bring you this story because, as y'all know, Resistance is a show about people refusing to accept things as they are. And that's exactly what my mother did when she came to America decades ago to try to make a better life for our family. So I wanted to bring you that story, the successes, the consequences, the small, shameful moments in between. And it's just low-key all of my personal dirt, but it's the kind of things that shaped me, and in some ways led to me making this show the way you know it today.

Saidu: All right, I hope you guys enjoy it. Borders Between Us.

Saidu: Hey Google. Pause.

Saidu: I don't know what's on the other side, but I know what it's like being here. How hard even simple things can be, like touching a slab of stone with your mother's name on it, the dirt from your father's plot still stamped into your favorite blue jeans. I can't tell you how long until you get to the place where you are in control. But where you are in control.

Saidu: It always starts off so good for me. Like here, I've just listened to some Afrobeat, so my mood is right. I'm alone in my room, and I start writing about my parents. About how much I miss them, how I appreciate them for all the sacrifices they made for me.

Saidu: Walk as tall as your father. Be as humble as your mother.

Saidu: But then it always gets to this point, this one point where I start to write about my mother.

Saidu: Ugh. No, I don't like that sentence.

Saidu: This is always where I start doubting myself.

Saidu: How does a humble person—what does a humble person do?

Saidu: I don't know the answer to that question because I barely knew my mother. And it's hard to write about a person you barely knew. But here I am, trying anyway.

Saidu: Walk as tall as your father. Be as slow to speak as your mother, and know that she just wanted you to be better than her.

Saidu: I delete. I revise. But in the end, I always know when I'm lying to myself. I always know when I'm making things up because I wanna sound cool or because I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I know when I'm bullshitting.

Saidu: But you know there's an end. And when you're gone, people won't remember your regrets. Even that line, I don't even fucking—what am I talking about there? "People won't remember your regrets." What? People won't—of course, people will remember regrets.

Saidu: I'm struggling to write about my mother here, because I don't wanna appear ungrateful. Since she passed 10 years ago, the only things I ever say about her is how much I appreciate her for bringing me to America. I'm pretty sure it's what every good immigrant child is supposed to do. In my case, since my mother died, I can't even write about the fights we had,and the long silences between us. Just listen to how mad I sound here.

Saidu: And when you're gone, people won't remember your regrets. Like, what? Shut the fuck up! Oh, okay. Whatever. So what's the story here?

Saidu: I'm gonna tell you what the story is here. But first I gotta get over this block. I have to try to write honestly about the relationship I had with my mother.

Saidu: The Room

My room couldn’t have been that messy when she walked in

Maybe a stray sock stuck out from underneath my bed

A bowl from last night’s dinner on the nightstand

A t shirt in front of the hamper, a jacket off its hanger

Everything just slightly out of place

But it was disorganized enough, that my mother shouted my name like the world ending

Saiiiiiiiidu

When I reached the room she didn’t say a word, her eyes did

All the talking. For months now they had become the color

Of the hallway light, so yellow it looked like she’d swallowed the bulb

She shuffled over towards me, she moved slower these days

But her anger was still one of the healthiest things about her

It was the one thing the chemo hadn’t taken away.

When my mother started yelling, I couldn’t figure out why she was so upset

I was 16, and my room wasn’t even that messy

But what my mother understood that I didn’t, was that her world was ending,

she was running out of time,

had a few months at best

and if she hadn’t gotten through to me yet

these small lessons of manhood, keeping your room clean, brushing your teeth, applying deodorant in the morning, if she was losing these tiny battles, then what would happen to me, who would help me become a man when she was gone, and what would my failures say about her as a mother

I couldn’t read between those lines, I just kept thinking

my room was not that messy

She talked and yelled until I grew sick of her voice

I needed her to shut her up. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember the shock that fell across her face when I said it. like I gave her a glimpse of the disappointment I would become. Like I was no longer her son. she pursed her lips, shuffled back to her room and shut the door behind her. And as I stomped back down the stairs I said to myself the words that would haunt me all these years since. I wish you would just die already and get it over with. I wish you would just die.

I took a stand against my mother when she was at her lowest, I betrayed her and felt good about it, I finally planted my flag of rebellion against her and won. But now 10 years later I need to try and take that flag down and put it away.

Saidu: Just months after she gave birth to me in Sierra Leone, my mother was faced with a choice: She could stay in Freetown with my father and they could raise their newborn together as a family, or she could make one last trip to America. If she went to America, she could renew her visa, which was expiring in a few months. She could work, and she could start filling out the necessary paperwork to become a citizen. At the time, it was clear to my parents that this choice made the most sense. Besides, in just a couple of years they thought, all the immigration documents would be approved and my father and I could join her in the States. There, the love between a wife and her husband could be renewed, and the bond between a mother and a son could be formed before son even spoke his first words.

Saidu: In just a few short years, our family could be reunited. So when I was about one year old, my mother left. She gifted me my father's name, Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr., and she boarded a plane for America.

Saidu: But by the time I'm three years old, I'm still in Sierra Leone. My father throws me a birthday party. In a photo, I'm dressed in a navy blue mini-suit, a yellow dress shirt underneath a tiny waistcoat. I'm snot-nosed and smiling next to my birthday cake, while other children dance around me.

Saidu: At four years old, I'm speaking. I'm saying enough words now to be able to respond "yes" or "no." My father is often pulling me away from playtime and putting a phone up to my ear. The woman on the other end of the phone asks me how school is going, if my father is taking good care of me. I say "yes," "no," whatever will get me back to my friends the fastest.

Saidu: By the time I'm five years old, I can understand what my father means when he says the woman on the other end of the phone is your mother. I understand that it means something important that she's in America, and that America is a good place to be. But I don't understand how to feel about this woman I don't remember meeting. How is she the same or different from all the women in Sierra Leone who have been helping my father to raise me?

Saidu: At age six, my father tells me she's coming to visit. Months later, my mother walks through our doors. And when I see her face for the first time, I'm not sure how to react. Her name is Aminata. She has skin much lighter than mine, and her smile is warm and bright. The gold jewelry around her wrists, her rows of necklaces, her sweet scent, she looks like a gift, but a gift that doesn't quite belong to me. Over the next two weeks, I spend almost every night in bed with my mother and father. I wake up within reach of both my parents for the first time I can remember. And I'm holding my mother the closest.

Saidu: At seven, my father tells me it's almost time. The papers filed were now approved. The flight would be purchased soon. My mother was waiting.

Saidu: At eight years old, I board a plane for America. My mother had sacrificed eight years away from us for this moment, but it didn't look the way they expected. My papers were the only ones approved, not my father's. I'd be joining her, but I'd be going alone. I take one last look at my father before stepping onto the plane. He smiles, he waves, he would never join us.

Saidu: The next eight years I spent with my mother in America were not what I had expected. Her smile was still bright, but I rarely saw it. And when she came home after long hours of tending to the homes of white folks, my mother didn't have the time or the patience to play with me, to joke, to make up for all the years we'd lost with each other. She'd rented a room in a small apartment for the two of us, and we shared the same bed again. But most nights, we slept on opposite ends.

Saidu: I remember watching Disney Channel, admiring the white mothers whose only jobs seemed to be making their children happy.

[TV CLIP, child: I said I was sorry. Don't stop the love.]

[TV CLIP, mother: We'll make a deal. You come home when you're supposed to and from now on, no bedtime.]

Saidu: I remember begging my mother to sign me up for sports, hoping she would show up to games and yell obnoxiously things like, "That's my boy!" But as she worked well into the night, I walked home alone after games, warmed up cold food from the fridge, sat in front of the television and wished I was white.

Saidu: If I wanted her to be like the white moms on Disney Channel, then she wanted me to be like a young Barack Obama, the African kid who brought home straight As and would go on to be so successful he could save her from the night shift. But the only thing I brought home from school was trouble. I stole, I fought, I cheated on tests. I got into trouble because trouble gave me an identity, one that was more interesting than the one my mother had in mind for me.

Saidu: My mother and I, it always felt like we were not who we wanted each other to be. Like the only thing we had in common was that we were trying to survive in America.

Saidu: By the time I was 14, we'd gotten word that my father died back home. And at 16, I'm standing in the hallway with my mother again. She tells me she's found a lump. A few months later she was gone too.

Saidu: Another Poem for my Mother

For the first few years of my life there was a voice

on the other end of the line that I did not recognize

I heard it on my birthday, On eid

And whenever I was sick. The voice always seemed to call

when there was something to celebrate or something

that needed mending. It was my mother’s voice, reminding me

That she was always there even when she wasn’t

We held a whole relationship over the phone,

from dial tone, to ring, to the operator

Announcing that the credit was almost finished

We talked on borrowed time, trying to maintain connection

An ocean apart

Even though all she did was ask me

Questions. And all I did was answer yes or no.

it brought me some small comfort, her voice

A few days after she died, I tried to call her

I laughed at myself when I picked up the phone

What was it that I had to say to this woman that made me

foolish enough to forget that she was no longer here?

I think I finally know the answer, I want to do what

She did for me growing up. I want to ask her questions.

What happened to the woman on the phone?

Why were you so different in America?

Was I a disappointment to you?

Was I the reason you died?

Saidu: How you doing today?

Aunty Khadi: Well, I'm good.

Saidu: And maybe it's not too late to know what my mother would say.

Aunty Khadi: It's lovely out today. Lovely day.

Saidu: So I traveled back across the ocean to find out.

Saidu: So I'm working on this story about getting to know my mom a little bit more, and kind of working through the difficulties between me and her's relationship, but also just trying to figure out who she was outside of me, and what led to the short time that me and her had together. Like, what—I think by now you know I have—or maybe you don't, but I have, like, a lot of regrets and things that I wish I could have said to her, and things I wish were different between me and her. And I thought you might be one of the best people to help me work through some of that stuff because you knew her, and you and her aren't that far in age. And yeah.

Aunty Khadi: Is that all the introduction?

Saidu: [laughs] Yeah, that's the introduction.

Aunty Khadi: Okay. Well, I'll answer it.

Saidu: Okay.

Saidu: I'm sitting with my mother's sister, Kadijatu Sumah, or as I like to call her, Aunty Khadi. We're in her modest apartment on the west end of London. She sits up in bed and rests her back on a pile of pillows.

Saidu: From almost angle, Aunty Khadi's face resembles my mother's. The smooth brown cheekbones, how they rise all way up to meet her small eyes when she smiles. How those eyes can command respect and invite you in at the same damn time. From this angle though, her left side, I see the only difference between her and my mother, a single gold tooth. Every time she speaks, it shines. Even though they share similar features, Aunty Khadi jokes that when they were younger, people always said my mother was the pretty one, and she agreed.

Aunty Khadi: Very beautiful. A woman that's loving. Oh my god, she was classy. Everyone loves her. People, oh my God. I'm telling you, Saidu, your mom she just came like flower.

Saidu: When you look at her, what was your favorite feature about her?

Aunty Khadi: Her smile. Her smile. When she smile at you, honestly, you would love human being. Saidu, I'm sure you saw that.

Saidu: I did see that. It wasn't hard to notice my mother's smile and radiant beauty, but it was hard to know the woman behind it. I had no idea what was she like growing up, before America.

<i>Aunty Khadi: Very athletic. She was sporty. We had so many medals, cups in her house, just in her name.

Saidu: Would you guys sometimes talk about, you know, what you wanted to be when you grow up and, like, your aspirations and your hopes and dreams?

Aunty Khadi: Yeah. Aminata wanted to be a lot of stuff, because she was very intelligent. She wanted to be a secretary.</i>

Saidu: When she was about my age, in her early 20s, my mother traveled to Europe.

Spent holidays in Switzerland, attended school in England, and earned her certificate as a secretary. Then she moved back home, got her dream job before marrying my father. This portrait my aunt was painting of a younger Aminata, it didn't quite match the mother I knew.

<i>Saidu: Why was she so reserved?

Aunty Khadi: Reserved.

Saidu: Why?

Aunty Khadi: You were not the only one she was, like, quiet to.</i>

Saidu: Aunty Khadi says my mother was always the kind of person who kept to herself, even from her sisters. But something about coming to America made her retreat even more into herself.

<i>Aunty Khadi: It made it worse. She wasn't social. All she does was work. Work, work, work. Work, home.</i>

Saidu: My mother and I could be in the same room and not say much to each other. We could be listening to the same song that we both liked but never sing along together. Our distance may have been because she was tired and stressed from work. I got that, but I still resented her. Besides, back in Sierra Leone, I was used to living with a parent who made me feel special: M father.

<i>Saidu: It was just different. He was a different person. I mean, you know him. He was very likeable, he was—when he cares about you, he's—you know plays with you. Like, he would take me to the beach every Sunday, and he would give me—he spoiled me. He gave me everything I ever wanted, and I just felt like the center of his world. It was unique. It was like the only—I've never experienced anything like that. And so when I think about him, I don't have any regrets. Like, even when he died I was sad but, like, I don't—I just feel so at peace with that.

Aunty Khadi: I think your mother was just trying to make you be a man. Everything she does for you, with you, was like I'm preparing him for tomorrow. And she would tell me. She'd say, lefam, na man. Let him be a man. I can remember that, Saidu.</i>

Saidu: Lef am, na man. Don't worry, he's a man, my aunt says. That was my mother's motto for raising me. But I wasn't a man, I was a boy. And that young, it was hard to tell the difference between tough love and being pushed away. So I ran straight into the arms of trouble. A list of petty crimes I committed growing up: There was the time I fought a kid over a bag of chips. The time I stole CDs from the mall so i could burn copies and raise money for new sneakers. The time I roamed the streets with other kids who were searching for something their parents couldn't give. We popped tires on parked cars for fun and called each other family. Then, after I discovered what you could do with a cigarette lighter and a can of Axe body spray, my school had to punish me for bringing a weapon onto school grounds: A flamethrower. I was expelled.

<i>Saidu: That's the time I felt more—more of a disapointment to her than any other time. That's the time I felt like, wow. Like, I really am just not a good son, and I'm not—I'm just not ever gonna get this right. And I'm wondering, I guess, if she ever talked to you about that?

Aunty Khadi: Never. Never, Saidu. She had never talked anything bad about you.

Saidu: Really?

Aunty Khadi: Yeah. Serious. Nothing bad.

Saidu: There was a—I just remember it being so bad. Like, I would get suspended. I got expelled. Like, it was, like, so bad.

Aunty Khadi: That's—no. Listen, a parent will discipline you. The only time she had said something is when those boys attack you. She called me here. She was so angry. I mean, furious. Very angry.</i>

Saidu: Oh, right. The boys attacking me. I had forgotten all about this story. During my tear of pissing people off, I had pissed off the wrong kid. After school, he showed up to my house while my mom was at work. I saw him through the peephole flanked by two guys bigger than him, but I stepped out anyway. Fuck it. Next thing I knew, I was eating size nine Nike boots and Air Forces as they stomped me out on my welcome mat. After a few seconds of furious kicks and punches to my curled up body, they ran away. And I got up, dusted myself off and yelled something into the wind about how I'd get them back, knowing damn well I wouldn't. And I went inside.

Saidu: Days later, my mom asked me why I was limping and I told her. She asked if I was okay. I said yes, and we left it at that. After all the stress I'd put her through, I didn't expect her to have sympathy for another one of my troubles. And I thought she didn't. But apparently, she'd called my aunt.

Saidu: You may have noticed my Aunty Khadi sometimes slips into Krio. She's doing that here. She's saying that my mother called her after the boys attacked me. When she picked up the phone, apparently my mom said to her, "Some boys went and beat up Saidu. I'm gonna go see the head teacher today."

<i>Aunty Khadi: E say me bele at me me bele at e tan lek say a day born pikin again.</i>

Saidu: "My stomach has been in knots. The pain feels like giving birth to a child again. They're trying to kill my child. I swear to God, if those boys touch my son again, I'll find a gun for them." My aunt just laughed her off, the way she's laughing with me now. She told her, "If you find a gun for those boys they'll lock you up in that country." She said, "I don't care. Let them lock me up."

<i>Aunty Khadi: They had given you a good beating. She was so angry!</i>

Saidu: This caught me completely by surprise. My mother was always angry at me because I gave her lots to be angry about. But she was willing to pick up a gun and fight. For me. Huh. I've never seen the white moms on Disney Channel do that. But why would my mom hide that from me?

<i>Aunty Khadi: Because she was all by herself and the children. All by herself.</i>

Saidu: My aunt says my mother wasn't the kind of person who laughed all the time, or even told you what was on her mind and how much she loved you. She was the kind of person who thought hiding your emotions is the best way to protect the people you love.

<i>Aunty Khadi: Aminata don't play. She doesn't know how to dance.</i>

Saidu: Did you catch that? She said my mother didn't know how to dance.

<i>Aunty Khadi: [laughs] I'm serious. I'm serious.

Saidu: Wait, she doesn't know how to dance?

Aunty Khadi: Honestly. I swear to God.

Saidu: Sometimes I just wish I could just tell her, like, the reason I was doing all this stuff. And I just wish I could just tell her, like, I'm not bad. I'm not a bad kid. When she would, like, talk to me and tell me the things that was—how I was destroying my life, basically, and how I was disappointing her, I would—I would understand her, you know? It's not like I couldn't understand. It's like I was seeing myself through her eyes, and I could see what she was saying, but I just couldn't really translate that to my life because other things were more important, you know? Like, getting other kids to like at that age was, like, more important to me than listening to my mom, you know? It was really hard for me that I couldn't tell her that, you know? That I couldn't just tell her, "I'm not doing this to hurt you. I just don't know what is going on with my life right now."</i>

Saidu: My mother was buried in Sierra Leone. My papers weren't right, so I couldn't attend the funeral. I could never visit the cemetery or kneel beside the headstone, to forgive and be forgiven, to make amends, to sit and simply cry. There were just the photos of the funeral that I never kept, and the poems I wrote that never felt enough.

Saidu: But in February of this year, 10 years after she died, I went home and I saw her grave for the first time. I didn't know what I would say to her, but as the tears began, the only thing I could utter was, "I'm sorry." Everything she'd worked for had finally come to pass. I had the good job, the American passport, the freedom to travel the world and chase my dreams, just as she had when she was younger. But I was too late. I know we don't always get to see the results of our sacrifices, but I was sorry that she couldn't see me become the man she'd fought so hard to create. I was sorry I couldn't save her from the night shift, from myself, before we ran out of time.

<i>Aunty Khadi: You don't have to be—you were a child, Saidu. What do you want to give your mom at that age? Excuse me, a child has to play, a child has to be disturbing. Don't do that. She was just being hard on you for you to be a better person. You understand? You haven't done nothing, okay?

Saidu: But it felt like—it felt like my responsibility. It just feels like I was responsible for something. It feels like I couldn't stop something, or I was supposed to make things better. I was the person she was grooming to be the person to help her. And I put her through so much stuff. It just felt like it was my fault.

Aunty Khadi: No, no, no, Saidu. I was there. You didn't do—she had never felt any bad thing about you, Saidu. No! You were a poor baby. You were small. Saidu, don't say that, I beg you.

You haven't done nothing, nothing wrong. You were her idol. She was just being firm with you for you to be a man for today. That's not your fault.</i>

Saidu: And maybe my aunt is right. It's perfectly normal that as a teenager, trouble is all I could afford to give my mother. And her saying this, it almost frees me. But I know I haven't told my aunt the whole truth. There's still one thing that hasn't let me go, the thing I couldn't even bring myself to ask my mother forgiveness for at her grave.

<i>Saidu: There's one more thing that I feel like I need to say to you. I've never said this to anyone before, I never told anyone this before. But this is a thing that happened. And we were home together. I think it was just me and her. And—and I think I hadn't cleaned my room or, like, it was just, like, kind of messy. And ...</i>

Saidu: I start to tell her about the room. My mother's anger.

<i>Saidu: Angry.</i>

Saidu: My anger.

<i>Saidu: I started yelling back at her. I don't even know ...</i>#

Saidu: And the thing I said after the argument.

<i>Saidu: Die. Just die, because I can't do this anymore.</i>

Saidu: I wish you would just die already. I wish you would just die.

<i>Saidu: Do you think that thing I said to myself, where I felt like I was wishing my mom was dead, do you think that's something she could forgive? That any mother could forgive?

Aunty Khadi: Why not? Saidu, it's how you felt. She had upset you. Saidu, even if you had said it, she heard it. It's just what you feel like saying in that moment, Saidu. You understand? Your mom is very forgiving person, she will. Even me, I've said bad, bad things.</i>

Saidu: It might've been my eyes turning red or my voice beginning to crack, but she could tell I wasn't convinced that my mother would have forgiven me. So my aunt kept making her case. She told me a story about when she was young and angry at my mother.

<i>Aunty Khadi: I mean, I was bad. I'm serious, Saidu.</i>

Saidu: My mom and her other sisters were going out.

<i>Aunty Khadi: They were going to a theater to go and watch some concert. I went to do laundry. They left me.</i>

Saidu: When she found out that they'd left to go to the concert without her, she was so angry. She prayed that God would crash their car.

<i>Aunty Khadi: I said Papa godfather, go make them get big, big accident. Me at don wam, Saidu. You can't believe it. They had—they almost died.</i>

Saidu: When my mom got back home, she told the family they'd gotten into an accident, a pretty bad one. Their car had flipped over on the way to the concert. And my grandma, who had heard my aunt cursing her sisters earlier in the day, immediately launched into yelling at Aunty Khadi, chasing her around the house to beat her, calling her a witch.

<i>Aunty Khadi: A witch girl! A witch man. I was a witch. [laughs]

Saidu: As I laughed at how ridiculous this whole scene must have been, my aunt getting her ass whooped for something that was obviously not real, I start to realize what she was trying to say. In our family, maybe in every family, we get pissed off and say things we don't mean. Sometimes we wish bad things on each other. And if those things come to pass, maybe somebody gives you a name like witch and punishes you. Or maybe you give yourself a name—like ungrateful, or a disappointment—and you spend years punishing yourself.

Saidu: But in reality, I'm no more of a disappointment than my aunt was a witch. It's obvious, I know, but if I couldn't hear it from my mother, I needed to hear it from her sister. If Aunty Khadi is capable of any magic, it's in her laughter, the way she laughs at what I thought was my greatest regret, the way she makes my shame vanish into thin air.

<i>Aunty Khadi: Ah, just go sleep, ya.</i>

Saidu: My aunt just scoffs at me and tells me to go to sleep. She removes her gold crown and crawls into bed. And I'm left feeling happier than I've ever felt about my mother.

<i>Saidu: Borders between us. It's not just about forgiveness, it's about sacrifice/From the time I was born you gave up so much of your own life/To bring me to America, and when I arrived I saw how that decision was still taking its toll on you, on us. So I learned to make peace with your silence/And anger, I learned not to question it, to not write about it.

Saidu: But 10 years after your death, I felt like I owed it to your sacrifices to tell the full story/We weren't close/By the time I met you in America we were reunited, yes/But there were still borders between us/We didn't share displays of unconditional love, affection, or forgiveness/It felt like we were immigrants to each other/Two people speaking different languages, trying to make things work/In a new country

Saidu: You, learning to dance from job to job/Traveling by bus and yellow taxi with nothing but tokens and lip balm/In your purse, finding ways to provide for the new 8 year old child in your life. Trying to keep us on our feet long enough until dad could join, you must've been lonely, you must've been disappointed with the way things turned out, with how little you gained/For sacrificing so much.

Saidu: At the very least you needed to raise a man/And me, so tired of holding my tongue about the pressures/Of being a mother's last hope, I let go, and said the wrong thing at the wrong time

Saidu: But now I know I didn't know any better/Maybe neither of us did. But now I know, so

Somedays I pick up my favorite photo of you smiling</i>

Saidu: And I put on/One of your favorite songs, that '80s Lisa Stansfield track about finding the person you love. I hold the small portrait of your face with both hands outstretched in front of me/And I dance with you, pretending we always held each other this close/That we always smiled at each other this way, that we never gave up

anything

Saidu: This episode was written by me, Saidu Tejan Thomas Jr., and produced by Jay Allison for Transom.org. Funding for this story came from the National Endowment for the Arts and supporters of Transom. All right, y'all, so Transom means a whole lot to me. It's where I learned to make radio. And if you could, it would be so dope if you would go on their website and see what they're doing. See if they can help you make something like this. And if you appreciate what I make, it's because of them. So please, go donate to Transom. That's transom.org.

Saidu: Music was by Bobby Lord, the Bobby Lord. And Timothy Ogunbiyi. Thank y'all so much. Credits music is by the Bobby Lord. And shout out to the whole Resistance team: Bethel Habte, Wallace Mack, Aaron Randle, Sarah McVeigh, Lynn Levy, Lydia Polgreen, Brendan Klinkenberg, Catherine Anderson, Bobby Lord and Liz Fulton.

Saidu: We'll be back with new episodes of Resistance in February. Until then, happy holidays, turn up safely, and we'll see y'all next year.