Becoming the Change

February 11, 2011 at 9:50 pm (Me, Myself & I)

 

So my first venture was warmly received by my nearest and dearest with congratulatory messages coming from quite unexpected corners but all very warmly received. The best response came from my dearest sister who after complimenting my first endeavour asked “When are you gonna finish?” Well, as I am only at the beginning of this journey my response was that this will be an ongoing endeavour with hopes that it will reach a wider audience (I mean I love my friends and family but come on I want a share of the great wwworld.com also).

This second ‘outing’ (gosh I really need to learn blog terminology and FAST) will come as two parts…one been the article I had already written a few months back when my destiny to become a writer (have I told you I intend to write a book someday, the only thing stopping me right now is that I don’t have a clue what kind of book I will write, but heck I do have a title…another story to be told another day…you see I really have reasons for you to keep coming back) became a more tangible reality.

“How so?” I hear you ask, well only in Nigeria ‘The land of opportunity’ does my designated driver for a voluntary work experience turn out to be a retired journalist. A couple days before our time together was due to end and I guess he needed a way to re-tune me back to communicating with him (I had resorted to using my IPod to tune him out after a number of inappropriate comments and suggestions of us stopping for drinks on the way to dropping me home) he asked me if I had considered writing (Heck yes! I have a book title HELLO!!!) and that he could introduce me to some editors to which he made me call his dear friend TIME Magazine Editor (guess he really wanted me to know he wasn’t just bragging) who naturally assumed I was Mr Driver’s PA.

Well we agreed that I would produce two articles which he would then read and forward to his friend (which reminds me I still haven’t heard back from him!!!) hence why ‘My Journey to Relocation Status’ and ‘Survival of the Fittest’ were already written before I decided to go though this route. Well actually that was the catalyst that lead me down this and so many other paths that my life is currently heading towards but then I have never believed in coincidences…

‘Survival of the Fittest!’

After a successful summer of graduation (although I finished my Masters since 2009), falling in love with the most incredible man to ever smile at me and making a contact with a ‘Big Man’ in Education who assured me that my skills and experience as a Social Worker was what he required to transform the poor attainment of students in his state, well it was simply a matter of

London!

HELLO 

There was nothing stopping me, I had found a nice Montessori school right next to what I was reliably informed is the best school in Surulere but turned out on visit not to be the best place for my child. So what if I needed to ‘seek’ my husband’s permission when he had spent the last three months barely fulfilling his duty as a father. It was simply a matter of courtesy to his parents more than anything else; after all in the fifteen months of our separation, his contact with his daughter had being disappointedly sporadic. Hence when permission was duly granted and subsequently revoked a few days before departure, I concluded this would enable him to justify stopping the barely adequate monthly ‘child support’ payments into my bank account.

Too late, my bags were already packed with all the ‘essentials’ (Oreo cookies, Nair hair removal cream and Cheerio) to ensure that this would be a trip home from home for us, a farewell ‘dinner’ was held at Haagen Dazs Ice Cream café and I was ready to go off and be a Consultant!

The fact that the ‘Big Man’ of Education was hardly picking my calls or responding to my email was only slightly worrying, it was just a matter of being on the ground for him to understand how serious I was about the Proposal we had presented to him at the Hilton Paddington. And that the greatest love I had ever imagined was also proving to be not quite the happily ever after fairy tale story I was after and more of those nightmare Nollywood movie kind of love affair was not going to put me off.

Once in Lagos, that my daughter’s school uniform was not ready for the first month went from being slightly disappointing to slightly annoying as the promise of the uniform had been one of the many selling points of our move here and my three year old reminded me of this on a daily basis. Nonetheless the school’s invitation for parents to be educators for the day on Teacher’s day reaffirmed my belief that I had chosen the best environment for my daughter to thrive. Call me bias, but I see so much of the potential that she has and after having paid on a monthly basis for nursery in London, what I paid for a school term here, only for her back then to come home everyday and tell me she again painted and drew ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’, it was now reassuring to see her learning and actually being educated!

Teacher’s day and the return to a classroom was very invigorating for me and I decided that whilst the ‘Big Man’ of Education continued to prove himself just as illusive now that I was on the ground, it was time for a new plan. Besides I was here to work as a Consultant within Education and the educational structures here meant that there was a wide target of private schools that I could approach. In the meantime I continued to make contacts through the NGO that I had met whilst in London and was able to do a small scale project with them on an after school project they have running in Ipaja for a few weeks. So what if my first three months back in the motherland have been characterised by unfulfilled promises and the longest unpaid vacation I have ever been on since I was 16 the main thing is I am back in Lagos and here to stay!

So there you have it the first part but please don’t despair… Part 2’s coming up right now…