Fope's Blog

As I sit here in Murtala Mohammed Airport Lagos, waiting a gruesome four hours for my boarding time to come (thanks to over-factoring in the Lagos Traffic), I can't help but reflect on the most memorable moments of my eighty three-ish days in Nigeria. Was it worth it?  Most of the time it was, but there were definitely some  meh  days. Somewhere around day 60 of 83, I started getting tired of everything. I got frustrated with the amount of time being in traffic wasted, frustrated with how many hours in the day I lost because I had to factor in the security of travelling in dark hours and then there was the need to wait on someone to take me out because going out and looking like a clueless "I just got back" wasn't really an option ... there are plenty people out to milk you.  Yes this picture again... Nike Art Gallery is such a beautiful place. Some of my aunties and I in my late great-grandma's living room. Moneywise , I didn't spend a lot....

It's 5days late...but whatever! Yeah, my blog turned 3...five days ago! Every year, on the Blogiversary, I go back to read my very first post . There are some typos there and some messed up formatting, but I'm leaving those there so that every year when I look back, I can actually see how far I've come. The bulk of this year was spent trying to find my blog's niche, but now that I've gone back to read that first post, I have no idea why I stressed about the whole niche thing. I made it pretty clear at the beginning that I would be "writing whatever I please on here". Maybe it's the broadness of that statement or maybe it's my preoccupation with the potential of monetizing my blog that drove me to look at other bloggers to see how things were being done. Or it could have just been me trying to grow. It most likely was a mix of all of that. I'm big on mentoring; whether it's active mentoring or just close observation of an obje...

Sometime in the middle of this year, I caught up with an acquaintance that I hadn't seen in a long time. Being at similar life stages (with school coming to an end for both of us), talking came really easily. As we talked, we were amazed at how many squeals of "me too!" escaped our mouths. I remember her saying, “But Fope, you look like you have things figured out on Instagram". And I looked at her with one raised eyebrow thinking, "How did you come up with that? It's not like any of my captions do more than explain the picture." In retrospect, I should have understood what she meant. As someone who has gone days without speaking to any human, not by deliberate choice but by happenstance, and one who also has had to consciously close Instagram because her thumb hurt from scrolling too much, I should have gotten it. I should have understood that she managed to make up a whole picture of my life from my posts. Deep down, I'm sure we know that...

As you may have noticed, things look weird/different right now on the blog.  Please bear with us. Somewhere between me trying to add "web-developer" to my bucket of all trades, I messed with something that I haven't figured out. I'm now eating my humble pie as I seek help from someone who knows this stuff. Thank you for hanging in there and trusting that it'll be even better looking when next you stop by. xx Fopsy

Yours truly made it to the Island this week!  Well... it is quite posh. I don't know if it's the idea I have of it in my head that's making me look at it through rose-coloured glasses, or if the island really is more 'chilled' than the mainland. I think it's a little of both. So far, there have been no potholes on the roads, just weird highs and lows that must be because it's still Nigeria and road maintenance isn't a serious thing. Let me list some similarities I've observed: 1) Traffic. Theirs might even be worse than ours is on the mainland. 2) People are still aggressive and oblivious to the rules of the road. 3) NEPA is still unreliable.  4) Houses are still ridiculously massive and beautiful. I can't keep taking pictures, but really, our people know how to spend their money! As for differences... 1) Things are more expensive here.   2) All those things I saw on Instagram that I wanted to do in Lagos are here!!! There...