Credit: slodive.com
It was a lovely Saturday afternoon on a summer vacation in the late 90’s… Lol, it feels good that I can say that! We were in Lagos on our annual holiday. My uncle took my cousins, sister and me to Ikoyi Club. We joined my cousin when she went in for a swim! I mean, who actually needs to know how to swim, right? The pool was packed! My cousin was a rather good swimmer. She swam off to the deep end, flapping her wings and enjoying herself! My sister, Ore and I, thought, ‘hmm, why get squashed with all these other kids? If our cousin could swim, we could too!’ With no inhibition, Ore and I flapped, kicked, paddled, and at the very least, swam our way to the ‘freer side’ AKA deep end!
When we got there, we noticed that our feet were no longer touching the ground! AH (insert Nigerian screams)!! In the midst of all the excitement, no one seemed to have seen two little girls struggling! When Ore would manage to stick her head out to scream out for our cousin, or the life guard, I would drag her down! In my mind, I thought, ‘if I go down, baby girl, you’re coming with me!’ lol! Oh the selfishness!
AUSTRALIA!!!! I’m head over heels for you. Marry me? Haha, calm down folks, I kid.
The first few days in Sydney, I was ‘gone’ by 3pm, which was about 11pm the previous day in Atlanta. It took three days for me to fully adjust to a 16-hour time difference. Since I’d either stayed up all night, or gotten up before dawn, I headed out as early as 7am, and came back to bed in the late afternoon. I was in my true element from when I got in the plane. It was like a switch was flicked on! Highly extroverted, people-lover, happy-go-lucky, fun, all smiles, inquisitive mind! I’ve prayed to God that that state stays with me beyond this trip.
Hair making: America cannot come and kill me because I want fine hair. The cost of getting your hair done is HIGH! I started by practicing on my cousins. Soon enough, I became decent enough to charge for services: perming, weave in’s, braiding, twisting, crotchet, etc. I particularly HATE doing hair (especially braids) as it takes ages, and makes my lower back hurt so much.I got to charge up to $120 at some point for this, so I stuck it out. I remember taking out a weave a few years ago, and I wanted to get big braids. I called around, the cheapest I found was $80. I’m Ijebu, smh, they playing themselves! I played my good ol’ Grey’s Anatomy and sat in front of my bathroom mirror. Four hours later, I accomplished the task of braiding my hair myself.
Cooking: I’m a great cook, but it’s another thing I don’t enjoy doing. The idea of cooking for money happened when one lady tried my Ogbona and asked how much I charge. Oh, I quickly owned up to the thing (although as at that point, I’d never charged for food haha!). I did my research, and before long, I was making upwards of $80 for my bowls of Egusi, EfoRiro, Okra Soup, and our ever faithful Naija Jollof. I dabbled into the meat pie business, but the streez is plenty! Ain’t nobody got time for that, lol! 
I decided to add 12 minutes to the 6:30, and catch a sweet dream or two. My bestie boo text and called me to get my behind up coz she knows I drag in the morning, I was texting her laughing, saying I’ll get up whenever. I got up, got ready. Didn’t feel like breakfast, so grabbed my salad for lunch and left. Prayed as I got in the car, and listened to my Afro beats for a few minutes, then listened to an amazing woman, Senator Elizabeth Warren crush Wells Fargo CEO, John Stumpf in an intense questioning session on the Wells scam. After listening, I wished/ prayed Nigeria will start producing people with characters like Senator Warren. I went on to FaceTime aforementioned bestie. She was gisting me how a very handsome Hispanic man pulled up to her and said her tires needed air. Based on her amazing description of him, and she has high standards in the ‘looks’ department, I joked that she should have yelled back, ‘no Papi, I don’t need air, I need you!’ LOL… It was fun and games until Papi’s words came back to haunt her. She goes, omg! Summary: She had a flat tire, and with neither of us knowing anything about that, she had to pull over and StateFarm to the rescue. She’s always SO early to work, this one time, I beat her! Lol. As usual, on i20, there’s a dead dog on the highway every other day. I saw one, winced and went back to my Afro beats for the rest of my ride. 
