Ngozi's Blog

I have A LOT of boyfriend energy. It’s in potential form, so it’s brimming… just waiting for the right guy to unleash it upon. I also feel like it’s palpable, so I fear that when guys see me, they sense it.

Let’s say I meet a guy, and we connect in that rare way, where we can really be ourselves with each other. For me, this only happens once in two/three years, so when it does, I get instantly carried away. If he makes me laugh, he spells his words in full and gossips like a woman, that’s all it takes. Before long, I’m throwing all this energy his way without ever pausing to examine the kind of energy he’s giving back to me. 

I complained about this to my sister a long time ago and she showed me a scripture; “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces” (Matthew 7:6). That’s when I realised that no recipient of all this boyfriend energy will ever say, “Hey Ngozi… I can’t match this energy. I honestly don’t think I’m worthy of it. Why don’t you conserve it for the next guy?”

They would rather waste it. I mean, why buy the cow when the farmer is giving you milk, cheese, butter and suya for free?

When I started dating (around the Flintstone era), cell phones had just come to Nigeria. At a point, me and my then boyfriend lived in different towns. My town had cellular network, his didn’t. He would leave his hostel before dawn and head to a phone booth to stand in line with other students and patiently wait for his turn to call me. The lines before dawn were short so our conversations could last longer. Any time after dawn and the queue would be a long, winding line of sweaty students pressed up against each other. Whoever had a turn with the phone had only a minute or two before the line would grow impatient and start grumbling as one entity. And two minutes are not nearly enough to whisper sweet nothings to your baby girl over the phone. So he set off in the mornings…

I am easily impressed, so you can imagine how he was raking up points with the early morning phone calls. That kind of energy left a young girl in no doubt that he was my boyfriend. In those days, it was so easy to tell. 

Now, whenever I’m asked how many relationships I’ve been in, I say ‘two’ and people are shocked. Truth is, only two guys have publicly referred to me as their ‘girlfriend’, and really meant it. Things are done differently these days so now I try not to get excited about meeting a new guy. 

The first time I chatted myself into a relationship, I didn’t realize I was dating my network provider until it was too late. We were in the same town, we saw each other almost every day. Still, whenever I wasn’t with him, l constantly had my face in my phone, chatting WITH him…

 

“Hey… What are you up to?”

“Nothing. Thirsty. Just drank water.”

“Cool. Send me a picture of the cup.”

*adjusts cup on table to capture good lighting* 

*holds cup so that newly manicured nails show* 

*takes picture* 

*sends*

“Your nails look cute.”

“☺️”

 

My bosses would ask, “Wait o… Ngozi who is this guy you are always chatting with?” And every time they asked, I would blush heavily and say, “One guy like that”. After a while, I told them his name and the teasing got much worse. “Please, when are we meeting this man?”

You see, one of my bosses was a young man, early 40s, but he was also a very very traditional Igbo man. Half the time, he spoke in weird proverbs. Ask him a serious work related question and he would start his response with “In my place, my people say, blah blah blah”. Sometimes he translated, sometimes he didn’t.

One day, during our usual back and forth over my love life, he dropped one of his proverbs. Very loosely translated, it meant I should get my face out of my phone so that I could see other real life options around me. We were consultants in the head office of a bank and he said guys were on his case, asking him what my story was.

I wasn’t interested in anyone else. I had my WhatsApp guy. And I told him as much, but our conversation got me thinking. So on my way home,  in a bus, face in my phone chasing with my Whatsapp guy  and I told him about it. Admittedly, it was a cowardly way of me asking him, “What are we?”

He responded immediately and said, “Hey, don’t let me hold you back. If you meet someone, please go ahead.” And that was the beginning of the end for me. For a while I tried to act like I was a cool modern day girl who didn’t like labels as well… like I was content with us just hanging out like the way cool kids do these days, but by the following weekend, we were done. Months later, when we talked about it, he said (in his defense) that we were never dating because he knew early on that we would never work out.

I’m telling you all this because it’s 2019 and I still don’t have sense… Pray for me.

I’ve known since last year that I wanted to do something nice for my birthday this year, but because of how hectic work is, I couldn’t start making any concrete plans till about a week before. Immediately my leave was approved, I was on Google searching for “White sand, turquoise water beaches in Africa” and four days later, I was on Diani Beach in Mombasa, Kenya.

Coming here was a little stressful because of the transit in Ethiopia. Plus I kept getting questioned (by Nigerian & Kenyan immigration) about traveling alone for holiday. Kenyan immigration even held me for a while to question me. 

Officer: Are you meeting samwan heeah?

Me: No.

Officer: So you jast came heeah to celebrate ywa batday ahlone eh?

Me: Yes.

Officer: Should I kam and celebrate with you?

Me: No.

Officer: Shouldn’t you be celebrating with friends and femily?

Me: I don’t understand… Is there a problem with me celebrating my birthday alone??? 

My question upset him and he called one police man and two other immigration officers. They surrounded me, eyeing me up and down. Without taking his gaze off me, he said something to them in Swahili and there was a collective gasp. The policeman asked, “Sister, are you the one questioning him or is he questioning you?”

I’ll admit that at that point, I became afraid.

I remember once seeing a top ten list of the most corrupt police in the world… or maybe it was Africa. I knew that Kenyan police featured on that list, but I couldn’t remember their position. I reigned in my smart mouth and instantly became humble. The whole scene felt like the stuff lifetime movies are made of. It would’ve taken just one of them to plant a small transparent bag of some white powdery stuff in my bag and accuse me of drug smuggling.

No one would investigate whether it was powdered milk or icing sugar in the bag… Nigerian media would just run with the story. I’ll quickly become a hashtag on Twitter. Yoruba people will tweet about not wanting to mention what part of the country this “Pablochukwu Escobar” is from. Igbo people will tweet about it not being the time to tweet divisive tweets because we are one. 

My parents would be exchanging “I-told-you-so’s”.

Father: Look at how you raised her! Upon all the church she has been attending!

Mother: Weren’t you the one who told her she couldn’t be any more useless? OBVIOUSLY SHE ACCEPTED THE CHALLENGE!!

 

Anyway, in the end they let me pass. It helped that a taxi driver was just outside the glass door with a large sign that had my name on it. I pointed to him and told them, ” See! That’s the hotel driver sent to pick me up.”

The drive to the resort was over an hour long, but I didn’t mind at all. At the resort, while I was checking in, one of the receptionists excitedly gave me some sheets of laminated paper. The first one had a picture of a lion on it with the words “Wildlife Safari”. I glanced at it and scoffed.

Nigga point me to the beach… and maybe the massage place with the rose petals. Then take me to the place where the fat guy grills those shark-sized prawns and lobster as thick as my thigh. Yeah… I know the fat guy. I saw him on your website. He was smiling in front of a grill and there were shark prawns on the grill. So take me to him NOW!

Instead, I politely declined the offer.

First of all, I was only going to be here for a few days. I didn’t want to spend my time trying to force feed carrots to a tiger. I came here to rest. Secondly, I’m a Maths whiz. I took one look at the cost of one excursion in Euro, did the conversion to Naira in my head, and then I told myself that I have lions at home in Nigeria.

So… here I am. I start my day in the gym, looking at the different equipment and not really using them. Then I have breakfast. After breakfast, I shower, get ready and set up my beach chair. It’s the perfect spot on the beach… Just under a tree (for shade) and close enough to the bar so that Raphael the bartender can hear me when I call for a refill. Sometimes, I go swimming. Sometimes I just frolic in the ocean. I enjoy taking long walks on the beach in the evening. 

Anyway, happy birthday to me! I’m grateful for life and good health and I’m so soooo grateful for growth. I’ve come a long way from where I was last year. I’m a bit sad this evening because I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ve had such an amazing time and I dread going back to Lagos. I’m just sitting outside my room, thinking about life and how it really doesn’t have to be hard. It’s so cold because of the breeze from the ocean, but I’m not ready to go in just yet. I will milk what I can from this beach before I have to leave tomorrow.

Cheers to me.

 

 

 

ps- Sorry I kinda rushed this post.

 

 

I’ve told you guys before that every time I brag about being a great cook, I mess up the simplest things… it could be boiled egg, or two minutes noodles and I’ll burn it, or overcook it, or add a bucket of salt. I believe that it’s the Universe’s way of telling me to not brag. It has happened too many times for it to be just a coincidence. Now I just cook my food in silence and I never voice the thought that I probably deserve to feature in my own cooking show. Sometimes I take pictures of my food, sometimes I share the pictures. If there’s a man in my life, I will feed him to death. 

Anyway, on Wednesday evening, during prayers in church, I thanked God for divine health. So early Thursday morning, I went off on my morning jog. I’m not as consistent with jogging as I used to be. In fact, the only reason I began jogging again after months of uncontrolled stress eating was because my weight had started to really depress me. My clothes no longer fit and I could no longer get away with “sucking” my belly in. So two weeks ago, when I stepped on the scale and saw that I had hit 90kg, I took drastic action; I went on a low carb diet and started intense cardio. 

Back to Thursday morning. While jogging, I had only gone a few meters when I tripped on a small bump on the pavement and fell hard. I fell with my whole body, face included. How hard you ask?

I hit my head and scraped my right cheek on the pavement. 

My right shoulder is scratched up and bruised.

My right knee is scratched up and bruised and there’s a big bump there. 

My right ankle is swollen cos I twisted it in the fall.

My phone screen is shattered.

Best of all, my right wrist is swollen and the nail on my fourth finger tore from the nail bed.

(By the way, can you guess from reading this that I fell on my right side? 😒)

 

A guy who had been jogging ahead of me heard me scream (or maybe he felt the ground shake from the fall). He ran back to see if he could help. He kept asking me questions, “Jesus! Are you OK?” “I’m sorry” “Are you hurt?” “Do you need help getting up?”

I was cursing under my breath. My knee hurt like a motha and the  pain from the broken fingernail was unbearable. I couldn’t see the extent of the damage because it was bleeding badly. While on my knees, on the pavement, I did not have the presence of mind to respond to Cardio Oprah asking me all those plenty questions. He eventually gave up, said one final “Sorry o” and jogged off. I limped home, totally consumed by the pain and bleeding in my finger. I rinsed off the blood and saw that it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but it was bad enough. My over-sabi inner nurse did a temporary dressing on the finger and on the wound on my knee. Then I got ready and went to work. I felt sore, but I was sure I could manage. 

I’m not sure who I was trying to impress by going to work because a few hours later, I was sitting in the emergency room of a hospital, waiting to get an x-ray done. By that time, my wrist and ankle were swollen to twice their normal size and my nail had bled through the dressing. My cheek was hard and swollen. All the questions from the hospital staff were irritating me. They found it difficult to grasp how someone could just… fall. And I felt increasingly foolish every time I told the story. It would’ve made more sense to them if I had said that I was pushed out of a moving car by an angry passenger. Or  that I got into a fight.

The award for dumbest question goes to the doctor who examined me. He asked, “How come all the injuries are on the right side of your body?” and I told him that I only wore the left side of my body armor that morning. Other than that, I was a good patient.

X-ray reports showed that my bones are fine, but there’s “deep tissue swelling” in both my wrist and ankle. They gave me three injections, a small bag of painkillers and sent me home to rest. 

Has your favourite blogger been resting? Not really. I went to work for the next two days, but with only one fully functional hand, I was slow and very stiff. I’m resting now though. I’ve been in bed since yesterday afternoon with my feet up, just like the doctor ordered. I didn’t even go to church today. I only get up to eat and use the bathroom. My mother calls me every other hour to remind me that I could’ve been crushed by an oncoming vehicle. I can only imagine what her testimony in church today was like. In her version, I probably fell and rolled to the side of the road, narrowly missing being run over by a diesel truck that was on top speed.

Anyway, that concludes the story of the time I almost split my skull on the pavement while I was jogging. The only good thing to come out of this is that my swollen right cheek gave me the perfect Tyra Banks cheekbone… too bad it’s on only one side of my face. Also, I might get a 10% discount on every manicure for  the next two months. The saddest part is that I’ve lost only 3.5kg.

I honestly don’t know why I still pay for this blog. If I calculate all the money I’ve spent so far on this blog, it would be enough to make a down payment for a brand new car key holder.

Work has consumed my whole life. I’m not quite over the “newness” of my job, but recently it has hit me hard how much I didn’t really have a life outside of church. I’m at work everyday till late in the evening, sometimes till night. And when I get home, all I want to do is set my AC to Antarctica and curl up underneath a blanket in front of my Tv. Most nights, I fall asleep in the middle of ‘Family Guy’ or ‘On The Case with Paula Zhan’.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve fallen asleep with food in my plate, on my bed. It’s a good thing I’m not a rough sleeper, or else I would’ve been getting rice and stew in my hair.

I moved to a new place in February and I LOVE my new house. It’s been two months since I moved in, but there’s barely any furniture in the room. I got some house plants (little cute cacti) because I’ve always wanted to fill my house with plants. One of the plants is an attention seeker because she’s yellowing and dying from lack of attention. My favourite part of the house has to be my kitchen. It’s the only fully furnished room. It’s very small, but it looks like it should be in one of those interior décor magazines (even if I do say so myself).

Work is tough (I won’t lie) but I’m learning a lot… Looking back, I realise that the lessons I’m learning today are lessons I would’ve learnt at my former job if I didn’t spend half the time sulking and praying that evil arrows be rerouted to my enemies. I’m learning things about myself too and how I relate with people. I have subordinates who call me “madame” and “ma’m”. Sometimes, I look at them with pity and think to myself, “This person you’re calling madame, this person you fear so much… Do you know she falls asleep with rice and stew on her bed?”

I read a ton of articles about effective management and leadership. I tried to study “wise” leaders in the Bible… yet every time I have to be assertive and make a firm ‘madam-ish’ decision, I start shaking on the inside. I hate settling disputes the most, especially when the two people involved are giving very different accounts of whatever event that led to the problem. I can’t judge every case by telling both parties to bring a sword and split the baby in two… I wish I could, but I can’t, so I have to listen. I’m not doing too badly though… I should give myself more credit. 

It’s the travelling I enjoy the most… I like that touristy feeling of being a stranger in a strange town, away from the madness that is Lagos. And I LOVE hotel living.

 

I had a guy I was “talking to”… but that didn’t last very long. It worked at first because I was spending every waking minute outside of work on the phone with him. However, it wasn’t sustainable because I started to suffer from severe sleep deprivation. One day, he hit me with  the, “We need to talk” and I instantly went cold. 

He asked, “Are you married?” 

I honestly thought he was joking. You see, in my head, we were two career people trying to make a budding long distance romance work. In his head, I was a secretly married woman who could only Facetime him when I was out of town, in a hotel, away from my husband. For the first time in my life, I was the one trying to convince a partner that I wasn’t seeing someone else. I could hear myself sounding like the lyrics of a 90’s R&B song…

 

My boss is out of town for the week so I’m a bit free. Usually, I write down a long (unrealistic) list of things to do in the two or three days that he’ll be gone. It was my way of proving to myself that I can live a full life beyond work and church.

Last time he travelled, I bought a new sketch pad. (The first and only time I opened it was to feel the texture of the paper).

I also bought some ingredients for banana bread because I thought I might bake. (The bananas were very ripe when I bought them and it took them less than two days to turn into fly-trapping toxic waste).

I scheduled a spa appointment that I ended up missing.

The funniest one was when I went to see a movie. It was on a Wednesday after church. I got to the cinema really early… got my ticket, got a large popcorn, a hotdog, and went into the hall. It was a small hall. It had those nice big reclining chairs that have an adjustable foot rest. I pulled my shawl out of my bag, spread it open and snuggled under it for warmth. In my bag, I had juice boxes… the ones with bendy straws so I wouldn’t have to sit up to sip my drink. I also had suya in my bag. Bottom line; I came prepared to watch the hell out of that movie.

A little over an hour later, it was the sudden noise from other movie goers that startled me awake. I looked up at the screen just as Nupita’s character was setting the bad guy on fire and realized it was the reason for their agitation.

Still groggy from sleep, I packed up all my stuff, put on my shoes and did the walk of shame out of the hall. There were two other people on my row and as I walked past them, I wondered if they could smell the suya in my bag.

That, my friends, was the last time I tried to forcefully “do life” that week. On the other days, I just enjoyed closing from work at 5:00pm, getting home by 5:20pm and just chilling. Why pay imax 3,000Naira for a nap when I can just microwave popcorn at home, eat and sleep?

 

 

I started a new job about two months ago. And if I could use just one word to describe it, it would be ‘Challengingasfuck’.

You know that ‘new employee grace period’ that people usually get when they just start working in a new office?… That grace period when you can mix up files or fumble with printers or even mistakenly go home at closing time, and you will be pardoned because you’re new. In my office, I never had that. From day one, I was getting in trouble like I stole money.

I accepted there was no such thing as ‘grace’ for me on the day my boss summoned us to the conference room for the sole purpose of ripping each person a new one. It was on my second day and a client had called to express displeasure over something. As we all moved to his office, I turned to a colleague and asked about the client and the project that put us in trouble. If I was going to get a new asshole, I needed to at least know why. My colleague said it was a project they started working on months ago and instantly, I felt relieved. As at the time the project started, I was still an email in the HR Manager’s inbox, awaiting her kind attention.

Feeling more confident, I joined the small crowd and we shuffled into the conference room like minions. Once inside, I moved to the end of the room, and stood slightly apart from the rest. I thought, surely, I cannot partake of this asshole shredding. I’m the new girl. Duh!

Later that evening, while I was at home trying to bandage my new hole, I resolved in my heart to get with the program ASAP. Again, it’s been challenging, but I never complain… at least I try not to. More than anything else, I’m extremely grateful to have been delivered from the poverty that previously plagued me.

Life has changed dramatically. Am I taking boat cruises and popping bottles in the club? No… not yet, but I am no longer a major shareholder in the Indomie Group of Companies. These days, when I eat noodles it’s because I just want to eat noodles. I feel a bit guilty because their stock-market value has probably dropped since I started work. I’m not bragging, but I made that company what it is today.

There’s been a noticeable spring in my step. I strut confidently, chest out, face up. Or maybe I just walk better because of improved bone development as a direct result of healthier nutrition… I don’t know. Bottom line, I’m a bit more confident. I’ve even started giving motivational talks about how “Life is not all about money”. Or “You have to look through the rain to see the rainbow”.

Like I said, most of all, I’m grateful. Till now, when I give an offering in church, I still get teary-eyed. During worship, I sometimes bawl like a wounded cat because I can’t believe how much life has changed. I’ve been wondering when this overwhelming feeling of gratitude will finally wear off… or if I will ever get to a point where I nonchalantly drop my offering like there was never a time my offering envelopes were only used as book marks.

Sometimes, I miss having all the empty time I used to have. If I had known that I wouldn’t die of hunger in the period I was job-hunting, I might’ve taken all the energy that I put into worrying and being anxious, and channeled it into other things like finishing the book I’ve been working on since forever, or I would’ve started my bakery. It’s sad because it’s time I will never get back.

Also, I’m now open to dating… and I mean proper dating, not being stuck in nasty situations with users who offer less than the barest minimum and still take and take and take *shudders*. I’m open, but I’m not in a hurry. I just figure it would be nice to have someone to share your day with.

And once I find a boyfriend, y’all won’t hear word! My motivational speech will change to “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince”.