I took the first six months of the year to relax from the constant activity that was my life; of exams, of classes and if you are wondering about work and money, I became a freelance writer. In addition, I tried to update my blog regularly, worked actively at the N.G.O I volunteer with and my parents indulged me and gave me a monthly allowance to go after my dream of writing and driving around Lagos in a bid to finding new and interesting things to do.
This past week my blog hit 4000 views and counting. I am super excited and grateful for this. It seems my six month of relaxation wasn’t a total waste. I am grateful to all the people that read my posts, share and post lovely comments, you made this possible. So to commemorate this milestone, I will be sharing a few photographs I have taken in the last 6 months and I know you are thinking Yes! I became an amateur photographer. A Picture tells a story and since I love telling stories with words why not throw photographs into the mix. I am currently saving up for a Camera but Wendy(My Car) wouldn’t let the account balance be great. I am thinking of starting ”The Over Thinker” YouTube channel, let me know in the comments if you would watch my videos.
I miss the late night parties we had. We made the poor life decision of eating spicy noodles and smoked chicken 1 a.m. in the morning. We had ice cream to go with it on some nights and on some other night we had cold drinks but on every occasion cold water served us just fine.
We laughed about this poor life choice; we cared less about the bloating stomach that followed, we were just happy to be alive in the moment and share a good meal.
We talked while we cooked, we laughed about life, worried about which direction our lives were headed, asked why we were still single, when our love story would happen and we cried when everything we were dealing with in our separate lives became too much. The important thing is after our late night parties we always walked out of room A41 with bright smiles.
We made each other better because we were unapologetically honest, not holding back when we needed to point out flaws in the next person and giving praise when due and most importantly we let God teach us about the true meaning of sisterhood.
The interesting part of our parties were when we would discuss the word, break down the scripture, share new revelation on things God was teaching us in our individual lives and when our parties were approaching the end we would argue on who got to wash the plates and kettle (I know you are thinking it, yes we cooked noodles in a kettle).
I miss this so much so in the last few months. These nights are long gone and I find myself craving one last spicy noodles meal at 1 a.m.
We have arrived at a new season; the things that consume our conversations are different. We are getting married, starting our homes and it scares me, I find myself asking ‘’if we are ready’’, Room A41 nights were two short years ago.
Two things are constant in my life; changing seasons and my sister who I share each season with. Understanding this makes embracing this season easy, I still have my sister, to call when I get confused, to pray with and share the occasional lunch dates and I understand that this season would end and we would be sharing tips on how to get mucus out of the nose of a new born and potty training tips in no time.
So can we have one last meal of spicy noodles and smoked chicken?
I should have sent you this letter a few months ago but, I wanted it to be perfect. I didn’t want it to be like my last letter that you sent back with red markings, highlighting all my grammatical errors.
So I have worked on this letter with mummy, ‘’my Dictionary’’ and ‘’Brighter Grammar’’, I really hope this is better than the last one. Feel free to mark any of my errors still, I need the correction.
We were moving house mid last year when I came across an old stationery set you gave me. It has orange papers with green and purple petals flowers around the edges and matching orange envelopes, it is encased in a black and white, zebra-stripes styled folder and instantly, I had the bright idea to write you a letter using these materials, so I did.
I also found the first journal you ever gave me. Blue hard cover note book with cartoon drawn players, kicking footballs at angels that made it appear like they were going to jump out and hit you in the face.
You gave me this journal the summer I turned 12. I had just finished my first year in secondary school and spent the better part of our ‘’reading and writing’’ lessons lamenting about my dad; how he would rather watch football matches on the last Sunday of the month than come to visit me in boarding school, that I didn’t feel noticed or loved by him but I was glad mummy, Titi and Tolu cared enough to show up with treats of chocolate, pizza and juice, month in month out.
You listened attentively, understanding my need to talk and get the weight off my little shoulders. I have long since learnt to deal with my father and I have come to love and accept him. In learning to accept him I also realised I am a lot like him and on some days it scares me.
The day before all the grandchildren were due to leave, you gave me the journal with the football players and said these words to me ‘’ you enjoy irony in all the novels and poems we studied and I believe it should be immortalised.’’ We both laughed. You always had a mischievous act up your sleeves.
Like the story mummy and Uncle Demola told us about the time you got up in the dead of the night and stole the night guard’s bicycle and how you listened with a straight face in the morning, while he told tales about armed robbers making off with his bicycle. When he was finished you walk him to the garage and pointed his bicycle to him. They never finished the story. I always ask “so what happened?” and they would both look at me with a blank expression. I have this theory that they were both laughing too hard that the rest of the events had become a blur to them.
Mango season is fast approaching; but the mangoes here in Lagos don’t measure up to the ones at the back yard of the house in Ilorin. I am mapping out a visit with Mummy, Titi and Tolu that would fall right in the middle of mango season.
Please say hello to Grandma. Hope she is taking it easy with the shops? I am currently reading your copy of ‘’Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass’’ and you have underlined a number of lines and written in the margins of the book, which makes it easy to read. Mummy thinks I should get a new copy and enjoy the book myself and make my own markings. I don’t agree with her though, your insights have made the collection of poems enlightening for me.
Titi says he can’t wait for pap and honey when we visit. Tolu wants to talk about politics and economic trends while mummy is really excited for the down time.
Finally happy 87th Birthday, God bless you and keep you till your 90th and beyond.
I have always loved poetry, because my mum read poems to my siblings and I when we were younger and my grandfather wrote a few in his many journals and on rear occasions he shared them with me.
I have tried my hands at poetry but I have long since accepted that I am not a good poet, that I am better appreciating the words of others and finding meaning in them.
I love the fact that the words take me on different journeys, the words have the ability to help me explore emotional depths that I didn’t know I have and the multiple means that each sentence and each verse contains.
So I have decided to share with you 3 poems that are very important to me and I hope you enjoy them.
Having a Coke with You – Frank O’Hara
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
This poem is one of my best love poems, I must be drawn to it because of my love for coke and because it gives a realistic picture of love.
The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
This is on the list because it is one of the first poems I learnt by heart for Literature in English class in secondary school. The hours I spent memorizing this poem gave me an appreciation of for the process of making decisions and sticking with those decisions.
In and Out of Time – Maya Angelou
The sun has come.
The mist has gone.
We see in the distance…
our long way home.
I was always yours to have.
You were always mine.
We have loved each other in and out of time.
When the first stone looked up at the blazing sun
and the first tree struggled up from the forest floor
I had always loved you more.
You freed your braids…
gave your hair to the breeze.
It hummed like a hive of honey bees.
I reached in the mass for the sweet honey comb there….
Mmmm…God how I love your hair.
You saw me bludgeoned by circumstance.
Lost, injured, hurt by chance
I screamed to the heavens….loudly screamed….
Trying to change our nightmares into dreams…
The sun has come.
The mist has gone.
We see in the distance our long way home.
I was always yours to have.
You were always mine.
We have loved each other in and out
in and out
in and out
of time.
This poem transports me to a place I would want to be and helps me find words to the love I hope to one day feel.
I hope you enjoy and love these poems in your own way.
I recently reconnected with a friend from Secondary School Demilade; she is currently working with the Eagles H.O.P.E Foundation in the Human Resources Department. This is the last career path I expected Demilade to tread and she is so excited at the prospect of growing in this career path and making a difference.
And there is Kemi another secondary school friend who I haven’t spoken to in a few years. The last time we spoke she was graduating from Redeemers University with a degree in Accounting.
Lastly, there is me, I just qualified for membership with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. Beyond our shared Alma mater, we were all science students and I can’t help but marvel at how much we all veered from that path.
At an outing about two weeks ago, we touched based on this issue and we all agreed to blame it on the myth that ‘’Science Students are the most intelligent students’’. Although this argument is true and may be the heart of the problem, there are a lot of unexplored variables.
After my final exams in Junior Secondary School, I was given a form to fill out the courses that would help determine my career path and the general direction in which my life was headed.
I read over the instructions on the form and it didn’t help me in any way to decide what subjects to pick or the best combination of subjects that suits my personality. If I had been exposed to proper lectures and counselling I would have known that a dislike for Typewriting in Business Studies didn’t translate to a dislike for Social Science subjects or a dislike for every part of Integrated Science didn’t translate to a dislike for Science Subjects.
My mother, a trained guidance counsellor administered a placement test and tried to pick out subjects that best fit my personality and who I was at the time which in reality constituted some of the building blocks of who I am today. I trusted her judgment when she picked out a mix of Social Science and Art subjects for me, the mix contained more Social Science subjects than Arts subjects. We filled out the form and got my dad’s consenting signature.
My dad didn’t agree with my mum’s result but I believe he didn’t want to spend the holiday arguing about it so he went to fill out another form and I found myself stuck with Physics, Chemistry and Biology. He had dreams that I would become an Engineer. This brings me to my second problem parents imposing their idea of what and who they want their child to be. Take time to understand your child appreciate who they are and adjust your plans to fit their personality.
The subject I got an ‘’A’’ in every term was Economics which showed clearly my mum wasn’t off in her results and I would have struggled less and exceled more if I had gone down the path her results had suggested. The next subject I exceled at was Literature, I had a quick understanding of the poems we studied in class and an insight into the mind of the authors of the drama and prose texts we read in class. I also loved and exceled at Chemistry, the chemical bonds and I spoke the same language, I never saw myself as a chemist but I believe I loved the structure behind the subject, how everything followed set principles. Physics and Biology I disliked and just studied to pass, English I loved because of essay writing and the Mathematics I loved because of the steps involved in solving a given problem.
When I filled out my admission form for University it was a no brainer picking Economics, but there came the problem of the second choice and my Guidance Counsellor Secondary School suggested Accounting so I filled that in. It never crossed my mind that I would end up studying accounting. In a series of events that were beyond my control I found myself studying to become an accountant.
I remember looking at my course list for my first semester in University. The fear that consumed me before I walked up to the board was overwhelming, the fear slowly ebbed away as I saw each course and registered what each course would entail. So my first semester came with Principles of Accounting. In my first class I felt like fish out of water, I didn’t know what to expect and a tiny voice in my head kept telling me I would fail the course, it didn’t help that on my first test I got a 6 out of 10 and my lecturer felt the need to announce the scores to the whole class and pass really interesting comments in Yoruba on each student. That was first day I wished I skipped class in all my life.
With each passing semester I got the flow of the course and I began to realize that Accounting went beyond balancing the books and the different areas of business law, economics and management were mind blowing and eye opening.
On one of the long summers spent with my grandparents, my grandfather gave me my first journal and I haven’t stopped writing since then. I have evolved as a writer, changed styles and shopped for topics that interest me at different times. I take my writing seriously and also my career as an Accountant but trying to find a meeting point for both isn’t easy.
We are taught to choose and stick to one thing, never to try a group of things but over the last few months I have been introduced to a community of people who work at all the different things they are good at.
There is my friend Anthony, the Cake Engineer who bakes really good red velvet cupcakes and runs a start-up cake company but is a trained Chemical Engineer, he spends time developing new and more efficient cooling systems for the firm he works with, he believes he can conquer both worlds and his believe in himself is all that matters.
There is Temi the Psychologist who runs her own foundation ‘’360 individual’’ and takes the most breath taking photos.
I never believed in labels. Science student, Art Student and the likes so if we are going to give yourself go on a journey of discovery before you assign labels and bear in mind that we are never just one thing. Explore all your different parts, try your hands at all the beautiful ideas that come to you in the dead of the night and don’t be afraid to live out all the parts that make up who you are.
Hello I am Oreoluwa; I am an Accountant, a Teacher and a Writer.
