MADE IN LAGOS - NO STRESS.....

I awake from deep sleep as I hear a rustling sound in the room. It’s pitch dark as the bedside lamp is not working. I freeze as I hear a familiar nawing, scratching sound ‘egbami mi o, kilon shele, this is not naija now, I’m back in the UK and this is a Quarantine hotel’ This better not be what I think it is! I slowly put my hand under my pillow to slide out my mobile phone I ‘on’ the flashlight and panning it to the corner of the room and on the floor there a pair of red eyes stare back at me. I scream... WTF it’s a rat. I don’t know who is more scared me or the rat🤦🏾‍♀️

Oh my days wouldn’t you guys just love the above piece of ‘creative’ writing to be true, sorry to disappoint you but this never happened 😏 

It was supposed to be my first xmas trip to Nigeria in years, I had it all sussed out. Yes we had the pandemic, but tickets were bought well in advance and we were counting down. What could possibly go wrong? 👀

I was relatively chilled and found I could not share my excitement with friends and fam though as the trip was not a given and involved crossing a number of hurdles, nothing was certain and I did not want to jinx it. 

The main hurdle was to pass a ‘fit to fly’ covid test 72 hours before departure. So far I had scaled through pandemic without being hit with the virus, I now thought it would be so cliche for me to test positive before the flight and watch all my plans go up in flames. As the day approached I became more and more anxious and thought the sensible thing in the run up to departure date was to pay particular attention to keeping myself safe and covid-free. 

Then Wizkid announced his ‘Made In Lagos’ tour at the O2 in the UK and everything come ‘tear to pieces’. We managed to get tickets but the dilemma was ‘Ola really? You’re gonna attend an event with a 20,000 Generation Z crowd just 10 days before you leave for Lagos, what if you catch covid’🥺 after much deliberation it was a no brainer ‘Star boy-Wizkid’ came first 🤩 💃🏾

On the day of the concert I sat down filing my nails and humming along to Timaya’s tune ‘...dis life I can’t kill myself’ 😐

All 5 of us set out that evening and had such a fab time. I was on cloud 9 for days after the concert as the wizkid experience was a whole mood and his lyrics have built 2 duplexes in my head and have been living there rent-free ever since😩

I however came down from the high of his concert and the knot in my belly returned the following week when social media was agog with stories of Wizkid fans who attended the concert who were now testing positive for what they had wittily tagged The ‘Ojuelegba variant of Covid’ our youth were all laughing, joking and sharing memes about it. I however just could not share the humour. Then that same week Nigeria in response to the new Omicron variant, changed their pre-departure covid test requirement from 72 hours to 48 hours which meant I am now to take the test a day before departure, I’m jittery it can’t get any worse can it?  

Alas! The weekend before I’m to leave and we’re doing last minute shopping for naija at Liverpool Street (yes o, people still go to Liverpool Street market and THAT infamous shoe shop that sells those garish multicoloured shoes for women and crocodile print for men is still open) when my phone flashes with a news update ‘There is fire on the mountain, run, run, run...Naija don enter one chance as added to red list’😳 (well not actually phrased like that, but you know what I mean?) 🙆🏾‍♀️

Chillin’ With The Big Girls: Tola &Bonje

I shrug my shoulders and from memory recall that red list country visitors quarantine for 10 days upon return to the UK. That’s no biggie in the comfort of my home, isn’t it?🙄. I get home and visit my fav website GOV.UK for a quick refresher ‘Red list country 101 class’ and there the phrase ‘QUARANTINE HOTEL PACKAGE’ may as well have slapped my face and at a cost of £2285 is making my eyes water too.....I read the guidance like 20 times expecting the words to disappear by magic, a bit like the car owner whose car gets stolen from where they parked and they start looking in the gutter or underneath other cars in disbelief. 

My thoughts are this is so unfair, how can ‘they’ do this to me...a whole smokey jollof being treated like unwashed white rice! We start to weigh the options, hmmm if we leave and return to UK that’s 10 days upon arrival in a hotel eating limp lettuce after 3 weeks of naija delicacies, what an anti-climax! We weigh the odds and decided that asun, snail, fish pepper soup, nkwobi, fried meat and ‘Detty December’ take priority, so Lagos here we come😏....to be contd. 

Sneak preview: Gele so tight😩

Happy New Year, yes it’s been a while! Please find a clip of my first reel on Instagram, singing along to the international world anthem Ameno-Amapiano. It’s the silliest thing ever and I had so much fun recording it with family. It’s important not to take ourselves too serious. I’ve uploaded a clip here for your amusement or you can check out my Instagram: risibyname👇🏾

If you can’t annoy someone, there’s little point in writing ~ Kingsley Amis 

💅🏾