Different women told their stories and I felt like I had done nothing with my life. These women were in their earlier 50s or mid 40s. I was inspired. But I also felt like I either wasn’t living my life bravely enough to have stories like these. One was a jewelry designer who’d styled Rihanna, Michelle Obama, etc. One had done so much in the art world outside her day job. The host was an executive director at a global investment bank and had also executive-produced a movie and really just had cool stories.
I had a great time. I really did.
So on my way, I was gushing to my partner about how great it was but that I didn’t have a story.
This morning. I get a talk down(?), not sure the term for it, on how I have a story. So now I’ll attempt to put pieces of my life on paper.
_____
I grew up exposed. My dad lived a fair bit in the US. Says 40 years, on and off… or more. So by virtue of his exposure, we were exposed.
I was your typical ajebutter. I’d wear a lot of nice things because my dad would send them. My dad was an ajebutter too.
In contrast to that though, I wasn’t a nepo baby, meaning, we didn’t grow up with a lot of money. My dad had left accounting to become a missionary. Went back to the US to do his PHD in theology and mehn, my mom was pretty much the breadwinner.
So we grew up not experiencing a lot of things our friends would because we didn’t have the means to.
My most vivid memory was C-school which was a summer school in Lagos where students go to experience things. I don’t even know what things but it was cool. People had fun. My elder brother did it. When it was my turn, my mom didn’t have the money for it so I didn’t go. Actually it’s Sea school I just remembered lol and I’m not changing my earlier spelling. Anyway, sea school is forever a figment of my imagination because I didn’t go there.
Anyway, my friends in school are exposed so I remain exposed and a cool kid. I go to a private Uni and I’m surrounded by more exposed people so I know what can be possible. My dad’s family are all exposed anyway so I constantly see that life can be bigger that where we are as a family.
I am excited about life. I switch careers the minute I graduate – to advertising. I’m doing courses and have an accident that almost ends my life. Thankfully I walk again months after but that changes me a bit. I’m somewhat shy now(?). Or just secluded, because I was for months. I used to voice my ideas on Twitter, I stopped. Like the 30,000 original tweets in 2 years kind lol.
Then I start working, I work hard, perhaps because I’d seen my mom work hard, or I knew life rewarded hard work in the right direction so I work hard. Right direction because I switch from microbiology when I realised microbiologists in Nigeria were not getting paid shit and I didn’t think I had the focus for medicine. Oh and I also quit the first job offer I was given for over twice the salary because I wasn’t sure it was the right direction.
I was seconded to Airtel, the telco. This is where my life starts to shift.
I wonder why I was the chosen one. You usually choose your best hands. I was less than one year on the job, but I guess I was smart and had the didi-aura lol.
Here’s the first shift – the Airtel team needs to switch their marketing agencies to one in Kenya. Tell me they want me but their contract with my agency forbids them from hiring me directly so they’ve asked the new agency to hire me. No interview, nothing. I have a convo with the team and an offer a few times my previous salary.
I save up and plan to go for a masters in a branding school in Italy. That doesn’t work thanks to immigration wahala so I stay put.
The energy in Airtel is infectious. There are teams of product marketers. I want to be one of them. So I decide to get a masters in marketing. I find this really cool school in France and London and get an admission.
Guess who has no money to pay post her deposit? Me!
I want to give up but my friend, Ope, tells me to keep trying. I don’t remember what he told me exactly but something that made me put some more energy into figuring out how to get to school. I find a company to give me proof of funds. This wasn’t a thing then by the way. They were just an investment company with an employee the universe sent to me.
That happened, first visa applied for gets denied. I lose some school time, apply again and get it.
Now I go to the UK with no money. lol.
I remember my dad’s friend picking me up. Well, his church had expanded to the uk and this was the pastor.
I stayed with her and then her daughter a few days and the daughter finds me an apartment. I remember standing outside the apartment and calling my mom with the rent price. Where was the woman to get it from?
We called my aunt who sent us the first months rent. I had fees to pay and I started borrowing. My partner then took a family loan to give me the first installment and I lived that entire school year that way.
Paying back a loan, taking another to pay fees or rent; destroying a relationship with my then partner because I didn’t prioritise paying back that loan because I simply didn’t have a way to. One regret but glad I finally did. I’ll forever be grateful to my dad who went to his family, structured a payback and paid back. My brothers and mom took loans for me. It was my younger brother’s first job and he was already in debt. When I don’t joke about the boy, it be because of this.
But yeah, back to the experience. I don’t know if I listened in class because I probably was working on a new loan to get or one to pay back. But I enjoyed every moment of it. With the last £20 I had, I’d get the nicest bao bun that’s popped up in town. With the £100 I have, I’ll go see Rihanna, and then return to my reality.
My school friends also had brilliant lives – lives that exposed me to what I could be. So no I didn’t hide. With whatever change I had, I joined them to experience aspects their lives. Be it my friend who was studying gemology on the side and driving P1 cars, to the other running triathlons, and many more. I did Shabbat with the Jewish, and pasta nights with the Italians. I lived a full life.
Even when I went to Paris and I was “kicked” out of my first apartment because in true didi fashion, I got an expensive flat I couldn’t raise money for, and then moved into a hostel and another hostel for two months. I lived a full life.
I’d hangout with visiting tourists staying at the hostel, taking really long walks, visiting/technically hiking Montmarte multiple times, with them. They were in transit, it was my home. I met many people. Dined with many people, played games… I’ll go for parties, concerts, use my last money to eat, then return to my life at night not knowing how I’d pay for my hostel fee that night lol. Sometimes I’ll go to my then best friend’s house on Friday’s so I wouldn’t pay the hostel fee that night, and go to a park first thing in the morning, to buy time, before returning to the hostel that afternoon and figuring out how to pay for another day. My things were stored at the hostel and all the people working there, well not all, but most had become family.
I had a church community too. I had learnt French, went to a French church – Hillsong France, was in a connect group and spent time on Sundays and weekdays with them.
After two months, I move in with a friend from church. I don’t remember how because I wasn’t one to let people know whatever situation I was in, but these friends took me in. I was meant to be there for a short period but was there longer. Perhaps one week turned to 2 or 3 weeks, I don’t remember. But I know I went to a salon, met a lady, probably overhead a convo, or maybe someone took me there. Found a Cameroonian lady open to renting a room room in her house and I did.
This time, I also got an internship with a company we did a school project for so I was earning cool cash and could afford to pay.
Things began to settle. The company had me flying to London and staying in fancy places. Life began looking up.
I started travelling too. Lisbon because I volunteered for web summit, drove to Bordeaux with my friend, etc.
Things looking up means time to pay back loans. And I did this for about 3 years lol. Or more. I was living from hand to mouth because for every salary, there was a debt that needed to be paid.
The day I paid the final one, to Ope, I felt the weight of the world gone.
It’s telling that I haven’t needed money in forever. Since that day perhaps. When I spent years needing. I don’t even want money lol, which is what I grew up with. – never needed but at least there were things I wanted I couldn’t get.
Today, I place very little value on money. It comes, it goes.
I’m not scared of losing money as well. I know there are people who say they never want to go back to a place. I think for me, yeah, it’s not ideal to, but I know I’ll get out of whatever. I will.
And no, I wouldn’t do any crazy thing to, lol. I was telling my partner how I never even thought to apply for a blue collar job that period so yeah, soft life is a must.
I’ve spent so much time on my down-bad story but I’m more than that.
I think I’m more of the experiments I’ve done. Of the things I’ve tried. I had a digital marketing consultancy in my first year working, and I had clients. I volunteered a lot. Down-bad me volunteered with wordpress and web summit for years. Flew to many countries on my dime – Using my money to stay exposed and learn.
I spoke, I taught. And it was through that I met the recruiter who’d introduce me to my first tech job, from which I’d get my current job. I did a lot of things without an end in mind. Just because I wanted to.
In restrospect, they add up.
My job after my masters was in a firm founded by my boss at Airtel. The one who moved me from the first agency. He trusted me to launch Budweiser in Nigeria. While at Budweiser, the team there wanted to hire me, he upped my salary and encouraged me to stay. Gave me more responsibilities and I did them until I was tired and that recruiter introduced me to the job in tech. He encouraged me to go this time. I’m forever grateful to him.
I think my life story is really about getting what needs to be done, done excellently. About a family that understands the value of education and would go lengths to ensure you get one. About a girl with strong head who cannot sky dive literally, but did the same figuratively with her life.
It’s about finding joy in things that made my worldview bigger. It’s about learning about things I had no business learning. It’s about knowing too much and not knowing when the knowledge would come in handy. And it’s about having the Didi-aura. lol.
I’ve spent the past few years calm. In comfort. Not needing a thing. It got boring. I wanted to push myself out of this zone. So in 2025, made interesting decisions and bought properties. I wanted a bit of the old Didi back.
I think I’m getting there. That old energy. Bungee jumping with my life lol. I did this too a few years after I moved back to Nigeria, moving into one of Lagos’ most expensive neighborhoods and knowing I had to get my money up. lol. This was not long before I got my second tech job. Which I never applied for. lol. And that’s one fun fact about me – never applied for any of the jobs I’ve gotten.
I was stressed this week because I had some financial obligations as a result of what I did and writing this made me realise and remember this is exactly what I wanted. lol. I’ll stop here. This is the longest I’ve written. It’s taken me over an hour or maybe two, but I’m on a flight so that’s fine.
Back to the discussion from yesterday; I might not gone from not having a home to having styled Rihanna Or have a fancy story where I was on a pilgrimage and the govt appointment me the head of a parastatal. But I’ve lived, in my own way. Doing peculiar things through the companies I worked for.
Here’s to stories. Those we write unwittingly. Those that sculpt us but don’t define us. And to whatever this season of my life is.
Leave a Reply