My Adjei Experience…

2

I live a very boring life. I don’t think I’m a boring person o… I just can’t afford to live the jet-setting, champagne-popping life that I think I am destined to live. My life is so uneventful that whenever I open my Uber app, before I type in the destination, only two addresses pop up; my church address and a friend’s office.

When there’s food at home, I can go days holed up in my room. Sometimes, to get fresh air and prove to my neighbours that I’m alive, I take an evening walk to one of the neighbourhood supermarkets where I am mistaken for a shop attendant and people ask me to help them find stuff. I have about four red t-shirts. Two of them are old and a bit worn so I use those for market runs, workouts and these long walks to the supermarket. Coincidentally, the supermarket staff also wear red t-shirts and that’s how I get tapped on the shoulder and asked where the powdered milk is.

Anyway, you know all the major life experiences right? The ones you’re expected to have in the course of your life;

  • Graduate.
  • Fall in love for the first, second or third time.
  • Publish your first book. Start your own company.
  • Get a chloroform-soaked towel, find a (single) man who gets your jokes and drag him down the alter.
  • Have said man’s babies. Celebrate babies’ birthdays, graduation ceremonies, etc

As amazing as these experiences are, they are planned. You only know they are amazing because other people have told you about them.

An adjei experience is one that you don’t plan for. It is unexpected because you’re too cool for shit like that to happen to you. You’re too cool, too careful, living safe with your Uber church address. But the adjei experience… because it is so unexpected you are not prepared for how powerful it is, and this makes it all the more unforgettable.

Happy Birthday Meeee!!!

, 35

It’s not even 12:00pm and this is already the bestest birthday ever! If you can’t reach me, I’m sorry… I ran away.

The past two and a half months, I’ve been in Warri. One morning I woke up, looked at my last packet of noodles and said to myself, “Surely, even the lowliest servant in my father’s house has much more to eat than this?”

We don’t have servants and I live in my mother’s house, but you get my drift. I conceded defeat, packed a tiny box and left Lagos back to Warri. Since I lost my job, I have struggled much more than I can publicly admit.

I enjoyed the peace and tranquility of Warri. Also, in my small area, because I haven’t really been home in ages, I’m kinda like a superstar. I walk by and people hail me…

“Doctor! Welcome o!”

I nod and wave to them like a celeb.

“How ya ozzband?”

“E dey. We taink God”

My sister is the doctor. The ozzband is her husband, not mine. I don’t bother to correct them though. I just enjoy the hailing and pray in my heart that no one ever collapses from a stroke during one of my celeb doctor sightings. They’ll drag me to the scene, pushing through the crowd that has gathered round the poor stroke victim lying on the ground, writhing in pain.

“Comot for road!! Make way… na doctor she be!”

How then will I explain that the stethoscope I hang round my neck is just a rubber necklace?

I wasn’t totally useless in Warri. One day, while I was eavesdropping on my mother’s conversation minding my business, sound waves from my mother’s conversation reached me and forcefully entered my ears. One of my neighbours was complaining about how hard it is to get good staff these days. So, later, I went over and introduced myself as an HR Professional… I even said it with a straight face and all.

The guy seemed skeptical at first. What do you know about recruitment? I spun some elaborate BS about jobs I’ve done in the past. He said ok, he’ll try me out. So I asked him a tonne of questions regarding the kind of staff he wanted. I think that gave him a bit more confidence. Then we shook hands and that was it.

My former MD used to talk about how he started his empire in a three bedroom flat. So I cleared out the small entrance in our house – a nice space where my mother (the millipede) keeps a gazillion pairs of shoes. There were also several big bags filled with Christian literature.

She’s a pastor millipede.

Anyway, I cleared that space, put a plastic table and two chairs, one standing fan and voila! Ngo Baby’s Recruitment Plc had kicked off. Maybe one day, I’ll write about the adventures of interviewing Warri people. Right now, I’m on a birthday vacation and this is supposed to be a very short post.

I left Warri a few days ago and although I will never admit it in public, I actually miss my mum and her silly Indian soap operas that are all shot in slow motion. I have decided to visit home more often… I’ll try.

I am happy today and I am so grateful for life! I was in such a terrible place this time last year. I thank God for the best siblings in the whole wide world. I don’t even have words… when I try and think of something to say to them, I well up. Thank you Nne, Wooolex!, Chip Chip and Gboo.

I am grateful for friends who cheer me on and applaud even the tiniest baby steps. I don’t know why, but they haven’t given up on me…

I should put up pictures, but I don’t want my enemies locating me via Google pics. Just know, it’s a beautiful place with a lovely beach and lots of seafood. I’m having fun. I took one backpack and my handbag & I regret it because I don’t need three-quarters of the shit I packed.

Sorry for the scatterednessity of this post.

Happy birthday Ngo!

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20170701_072847    20170701_084226

2:00pm Deadline…

12

In January, a few weeks after my sister’s wedding, my aunt called to tell me she gave someone my number and the person was going to call me. I asked, “What is he calling me for?”

She said, “Ehn… don’t worry. He will call you.”

Me, I like aunty. I trust aunty. Christmas in Warri, we shared a bottle of wine and had a long ass conversation about a lot of things, centred mostly around faith, money, career. I figured whoever was going to call would either be a potential employer or, worst case scenario, a pastor. So when the guy called about an hour later, I answered with my best “pastor voice”.

That call lasted only about a minute and it felt like an interview – Where do you stay in Lagos? Which church do you attend? I’ve never heard of it. Are you on Wuzzup? I had barely hung up when he messaged me on Whatsapp, requesting a full-length picture and a brief description of myself. I didn’t send a picture or describe myself. The rest of the evening, as he bombarded me with messages (‘it sims am disturbing u’, ‘wen ur lest busy let me no’), I came to the painful conclusion that;

  1. He was neither a pastor or an employer.
  2. The only punctuation mark this man has ever come across is the hyphen in his mother’s maiden name.
  3. Aunty does not like me as much as I thought. Either that, or she was being paid handsomely.

At night, after he sent the last message (Gd nyt. Slip tyt) I blocked him. It was mean, I know, but I just couldn’t deal.

    —————————————————————————————————

It’s good Friday. I’m in Warri for Easter, and aunty is in my house, demanding to know what went wrong with the guy. I’m wary of the fact that she will give him feedback so I choose my words very carefully. Also, I don’t trust her as much anymore, so I simply tell her that he came off as a bit too desperate for my liking.

Her eyes widen in shock. In her world, there’s no such thing as a desperate ‘oyel’ worker. She reminds me that time is no longer on my side, and then gives several examples of women, all friends of hers, who were smart enough to scheme their way into one man’s house. I like that kind of gist so at this point, she has my attention. One friend got pregnant, the other two just positioned themselves strategically. The last story sounded eerily like kidnapping where the girl seduced the guy, then showed up at his family’s doorstep days later, with her parents, to announce that their son had slept with her and would have to marry her.

She concludes each story with “If the man likes, he can carry all the women outside, she is now sha in her husband’s house with her children”.

I don’t want to end up sha being in someone’s house… that’s not the dream. I also want kids who will win spelling competitions, but I don’t say anything else so we just sit there in silence.

She asks, “Abi do you have someone you’re seeing?” and the question catches me completely off guard. “Is that the problem? You already have a boyfriend?”

I think of one guy living in a different state about 8/9 hours away, who complains that I don’t allow him breathe with my incessant phone calls. We haven’t spoken in two days because I haven’t called. I want to explain to her that it’s kind of complicated, that if I can just work on my trust issues, we wouldn’t fight so much and everything would be perfect, but I don’t think she will find the irony amusing. So I pocket my sermon on the concept of phone calls as a love language for a later date.

I say no, there’s no one.

That evening, the oil worker calls. His acting is worse than his spelling because he is “surprised aunty didn’t tell me that you’re in town”. This time we talk… he asks about past relationships, school, work, everything. Some of his own questions, I throw back at him. He talks about his now-married ex that he has never quite gotten over. She is his biggest regret, and he admits that he compares every girlfriend to her.

A part of me feels sorry for him. Maybe he’s still single because he’s daft and goes around warning prospective spouses that they will forever be compared to the ghost of his ex.

The next day, it’s raining heavily, but he insists on coming to see me straight from the office. We meet at the gate of my estate and I get in the car. He wants to go to my place, see my parents. I have visions of him knocking on my mother’s door at 2:00am because I didn’t respond to his “Gd nyt. Slip tyt” so I make him park in a random empty garage instead. I don’t need him knowing my house.

He’s much better looking in person than in his “Wuzzup” picture. He has a lovely smile. I start to feel a little self-conscious because he’s dressed up for our meeting. Me, I’m wearing my nicest flip-flops. We talk some more about his job. He’s casually mentioning the number of people who call him ‘oga’ in his office. He has a meeting in Denmark next week, from there he’ll head to Spain. In my mind, all I can think of is how he writes his official e-mails.

He talks about his mum who he loves dearly, but can’t visit too often because of work. I have a suggestion; why can’t she come visit you?

“Das ezally why I need a woman in the house. If mumsi come, she need to ‘ave someone that will stay in the house with her and be cooking for her.”

Like me, he has trust issues and is scared to death of being lied to or cheated on. It’s the one thing we have in common and before long, we’re exchanging war stories… who cheated on us, and how we found out. In the end, I won. It’s the longest, most interesting conversation we’ve ever had. He’s happy, almost excited, because aunty has assured him that I am a good Christian girl who doesn’t want him for his money. He keeps exaggerating the “good girl” and I start feeling a tinge of guilt. Will he still think I’m such a good girl if I tell him about Jason, my faithful dildo?

Hours after he’s gone, I get an e-proposal… or is it a mobile proposal? He is certain that God wants to do something in our lives by joining the two of us before the end of the year. He promises to take care of me and provide for me. He has a flight to PH by 2:00pm the next day, so please can he get a response before then?

Orji, Ngozi (MSc PhD Dr MBBS Consultant))

13

Good morning beautiful people…

Last week, my uncle called me. We’re not related by blood, but we’ve been family friends for a long time. I hadn’t heard from him in almost a year so when I saw his name pop up on my phone, I had to wipe my screen to make sure I was seeing clearly.

“Ngor! Hawayoo?”

“I’m fine thank you sir.” He’s at a weird age where he’s not so much older than us kids that we should be calling him uncle, but he’s also not our mate so we can’t call him by his first name. However, because he’s richer than God, we call him “sir”. In fact, if not for self control, we would’ve been adding “oga” in front of the “sir”.

“Your mother told me that they sacked you.” 

I hate that word ‘sack’, but uncle is not patient at all… there was no point going into a lengthy explanation about budget cuts and redundancy so I simply answered, “Yes sir”.

He said, “Sorry my dear. Don’t worry… do you know what you will do?”

At the sound of those words, my heart skipped several beats. I thought, Holy shit! I’m going to get a job in his billion Naira oil company!  He might create one useless position with plenty salary and insane benefits…

I would probably be the Head Crude Online Tester, like a sub-division of Quality Control. My job would be to look at online pictures of crude oil to make sure that whatever we drilled was the same colour. I would put in two or three years of hard work and retire before 40…

But then uncle killed my dreams of early retirement when he said, “You can start your own consulting firm. You have very good communication skills. Just print out business cards and schools can pay you to come and talk to their students about their college education. Then you can charge people 200,000 Naira for your services. I have a friend who is doing it and he’s making mad money.”

I was confused. “Sir, erm… please which services?”

“Consulting na! You don’t even need office. My friend doesn’t have office. He meets his clients in restaurants. He will look at their documents there and advice them on what they should do. And before he takes you on as a client, you will sign a document that says you cannot hold him responsible if you don’t get a visa. You see how he gets his cool money?”

That’s when it dawned on me what he was talking about. “Yes sir… very cool.”

In truth, I was heartbroken.

                                       Oil tester picture 2

With great fear and trembling, I told him that I don’t have knowledge of immigration laws and shit like that, and it’s something I’ll have to take time to learn. As I suspected he would, he went off on me. He said I’m lazy, and I don’t want to hustle, then he reminded me again how much money his friend is making.

My country people, how the hell am I supposed to answer ‘Consultant’ and start charging people 200,000 Naira to let me use them to learn work? I was horrified. Only Jehova knows how many holes this man must have drilled in his neighbour’s backyard in search of oil at the time he was learning work.

I remained quiet while he screamed. When he was tired, he said, “Ngozi? Are you hearing me? Design somtin… let them print cards for you. Do your research and let me know. I will support you fully.” I agreed to get back to him in a week’s time and the conversation ended.

Is it just me or do you guys agree that in Nigeria we’re obsessed with packaging? That’s why someone will buy/rent a building next to an existing supermarket, spend millions in aesthetics – tiles, paint, marble counter tops, big ACs – only to open shop & sell over priced pampers and Vaseline. And I suspect it will only get worse in this era of buy-Nigeria-to-grow-the-Naira.

Anyway, I’ve told you guys before that I don’t have a single business bone in my body… so maybe there are some trade tricks and secrets that I’m not getting. I won’t lie though, I briefly considered my uncle’s offer because, like he said, I can speak good English and I can fill forms… but I know my luck; one day one angry Benin man who paid me his life’s savings for a visa to Italy to visit his daughter will hold me responsible when he is denied visa. He will use the contract we both signed to tear me heavy slap.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Enjoy your weekend people…

A peaceful world without DSTv

4

There was a time, some years ago, when news headlines always had one story or the other about Asian executives committing suicide. I did some research and discovered that it’s actually a thing with Japanese people, especially the men.  It’s called an honourable suicide. How it works is, a large organization starts to fail… maybe it experiences a colossal loss or there’s fraud exposed at top management level. The CEO or MD or high-ranking official directly responsible for the problems/fraud, will open a window in his large, sprawling, 20th floor office and jump out.

No suicide note, no nothing… just his brains splattered all over the sidewalk.

Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit. Most of them just shot themselves, but the principle behind the suicides was the same; I have fucked up big time. I am a failure. Rather than bring shame and disgrace to my family name, let me do this honourable sidewalk dive.

To a very large extent, I understand where they are coming from. It’s from a place of accountability to oneself… you start to experience it at a very young age, especially when you are raised in one of those “What will people say?” households like I was.

I believe everyone has similar early childhood memories… like going back home on the last day of school with a report card that had: Overall Position 37/40 written boldly at the top in red ink.

On your way home, you ponder over your young life and tears start to fall uncontrollably. You feel terrible, but most of all, you feel ashamed. To make matters worse, tomorrow is the end of year PTA meeting. Your parents are going to talk to your teacher and they will find out that the students who carried 38th, 39th and 40th positions are triplets who had transferred to a new school at the start of second term.

That’s when you first consider an honourable suicide. You imagine jumping in front of the school bus as its going downhill, or hugging the hair dryer in your bathtub during your night bath. Why? Because you don’t want to bring shame to your family.

It’s called PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY.

We don’t have that here in Nigeria. If we did, the brains of the top brass at DSTv, MTN, PHCN, Arik and many more organisations would be scattered beautifully around the sidewalks of Lagos and Abuja… or wherever the hell their head office is.

Today’s rant was inspired by DSTv… so let’s focus on them.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I renewed my DSTv subscription, made payment and my decoder came on immediately. It used to happen… in 2014. I would get home from work, sit in front of the Tv, do the transfer and voila! it’s back on. That doesn’t happen anymore. And because I have a thing against call centres/customer care lines, I usually go through the pain of exploring every single DIY option that there is. NONE of these options work. None.

And it’s not just me… I was on several blogs tonight, looking for one last option. I read through the comments sections and I was appalled! Even on their Twitter page, it’s the same thing; people pay and are not connected immediately. People pay days ahead of subscription expiry and they are still disconnected!!

So every gaddem month, as if my destiny has been tied to theirs, I have to call in and speak to one idiot agent who will tell me a million times that “We siseerly aplorgize for any ikorveenience”.

The most painful part for me is towards the end of the call, after attending to you and the agent asks, “Ma, do you know about the self-service option?  You can just text blah blah blah to tree-zero-tripletree.”

                                  dstv phone call

That’s what their saying, but what I am really hearing is, “You sef, upon all this English you are speaking, are you not hip or cool enough to join the tech trends? Just text blah blah blah to tri-zehrow-tripletri and it will come on like magic, instead of calling us, wasting our time and yours”.

I was reading about Nokia yesterday and how they have crashed. I understand that their ogas were actually crying and I felt sorry for them. Nokia is an excellent brand, but my guess is that they probably got too comfortable. While their competition was growing, they relaxed.

That is my forecast for DSTv. Very soon, there will be competition… the kind of competition that will shut them down. Is this an informed guess based on profit margins and detailed business analysis? No. I’m just swearing for them… plain old, lying on the floor naked, calling to gods of the moon and the stars to bring judgment upon them.

I don’t blame them. It’s my fault for being such a Tv junkie… because when I really think about it, what is that thing that DSTv gives me that the Lord God my savior cannot give me? Is it Comedy Central? There’s plenty of comedy in the bible! Have you ever pictured a camel trying to fit into the eye of a needle? That shit is funny as hell!

Is it Crime and Investigation? There’s lots of crimes in the bible… CSI, Law and Order type of crimes. The entire bible is one big reality series.

Just imagine how peaceful my life would be. I wouldn’t have to go through this hell every month and hairdressers will no longer shampoo my left eye just because they are watching one of those silly ass Indian soaps… you know those ones where everyone has a nose ring and everything happens in slow motion.

This post is already too long and I have to go to bed. I’m not even as angry as I was when I started.

In conclusion, this is a personal heartfelt appeal to the ogas at DSTv, MTN, PHCN and Arik…

                                  begging cat

You probably had a plan in the beginning- a plan to excel and take your organization to incredible heights. Maybe you got carried away in the lawlessness that is Nigeria. Our society taught you that you can get by on poor or mediocre services. You shouldn’t even count that single water pump that you installed in one backwater village somewhere up North… the truth is, you have failed.

I urge you today to do the honourable thing. Walk up to your window, open it wide, and please do the world a favour: fly out.

Thank you.