27/03…
27–03–2009.
The next day is just another day to jump the bus, roll the dice, do some bricklaying, and play football from sunset till dusk.
Your brother reminds you that you’d be 15 the next day, you giggle, and remember you don’t even number the days anymore, and the years just pass by like your life.
There is barely no heart to apply unto wisdom, as all the lessons are learnt on the street, the hard way. Either it’s how to call passengers while evading omo onile or how to mix cement and sand to ensure you produce the right number of blocks with the most minimal cement so that your oga will have some change to keep; you learn on the go, or you are gone.
You haven’t been in school for six years, why should another year matter?
27–03–2012.
You’re 18. You bake a sumptuous cake with the help of your lovely mum. It’s the first cake you’d bake, it’s the last cake you’ve baked. (in retrospect, you should bake some cakes one of these days). It is fundant icing, your mum says it helps retain the quality just incase it doesn’t finish that day as you do not have a refridgerator.
You take the cake to work the next day. You are teaching at a nearby Primary school while waiting for JAMB results. You wrote your second UTME three days before.
Your students love the cake, they all sing for you, and Bolu, your favourite student plays you some melodious tunes on her mouth-organ, you smile as they all share portions of cake.
The cake finishes and your mum is astounded when you come home with an empty-tray. You shrug your shoulder as if to say I told you so.
27–03–2013.
Your grandpa looks at you and says; this is your last UTME . If you do not pass this UTME, that barbing that you want to learn, you will go and learn it. Full time.
It is your third attempt at UTME, you didn’t fail the first two, you were just too ignorant not to find out the right combination of subjects required for your course. Now, at the cusp of the third and final attempt- you recieve a life-changing threat and your life changes, for good.
27–03–2015.
They stole your phone yesterday. They robbed your room. The room is Angola, G108. It is one of the last blocks, prone to attacks from both sides.
One of your room-mates forgot to lock the door, and he slept off while reading. There is an unwritten rule. The last person to sleep locks the door, he has flaunted the rule and the whole room is paying.
You all woke up to disarray, chaos and languorous wailings of frustration. Losing a phone in lecture free week is one of the most horrendous experiences you could have as a student.
You are in the middle of the departmental election. Your closest opponent is gaining ground. He is the favourite, you are the under-dog. Your school mum, wants to reach you, she has promised to throw you an exciting 21st birthday party, but she had to travel for her IT. She can’t reach you, she is fretting.
Your campaign manager says this is not the time to mourn a lost phone. You have to prepare for the manifesto night, you have to do room-to-room campaign. Your opponent is proudd, but you are effable, effeminate and loveable. You have to capitalize on his weaknesses and elevate your strenghts. Be subservient, you need the votes of the constituents.
It’s one of the first lessons I learnt about politics, and life. Destinies are shaped by stories, and narratives. Either you are telling your story or not, a story is being told about you.
27–03–2018.
You have resumed your first work after school; you are excited, and simultaneously confused. Why are you settling for a 25k job where you spend 22k on t.fare. You do not know, but the job lets you apply your tax knowledge and your mother says it is better to look for a job while you have a job than to look for a job when you don’t have a job. You will learn that your mother was right six years later, and you will learn in a bitter way.
27–03–2019
It is 23:59.
Your birthday almost met you in Lagos traffic. It is your birthday but you aren’t in a celebratory mood.
You are soused in the worries of how you’d get back to work by eight am because you have a nine am meeting where you’d be presenting to an Indian manager and timezone is a constraint. Cons of a multinational.
Your mother prays for you, your brother calls too, and wishes you happy birthday. You sleep for two hours or three, and wake up at four am.
You dress up, hurry out, and walk straight into the hands of armed robbers. They were both on a racing bike gradually coming to an halt.
As the bike stops, your alertness heightened. The first robber jumps off the bike, he threatens you with his dagger, and attempts to snatch your phone, you resist.
He throws a punch, you dodge, then kick him into the drainage. It rained the day before, so the ground is slippery. He slips and lets out a scream.
His partner gets off the bike and chase with his knife, you run, then pause.
He catches up with you, breathing rapidly. He lunges his punch, you dodge his lunge of punch, and punch back twice, with all your strenght. They land on his jaw, his mandible creaks. He screams o ti fo mi lenu oo.
It’s a basic karate (or judo) move; your opponent lunges a punch, you dodge, they are off balance, momentarily, then you attack. immediately.
Doesn’t life also throw us punches when we are off balance?
You run again and keep screaming egbamiii oooo till you get back to your close. The vigilante is no where to be found. You run and keep running, with your backpack containing your laptop. You do not stop till you get to to your gate. You open the gate, and your mother asks if you forgot something. You are panting, and saying robbers, robbers with gasped breathes.
Your birthday fit is stained. You go upstairs, change your clothes, wait till seven am, then take bikes. You get to the office before nine am, and prepare your presentation.
The Indian manager joins ten minutes past nine (WAT) and he loves your presentation. He said he’d tell your manager you have been of great help. You smile, life is cool. He didn’t know your life had flashed before you three hours earlier.
What a way to mark your 25th.
27–03–2022
Two days before,
Your friend, Ebube asks what you want for your birthday and if you are free for a shoot. You show up in your workplace’ tee and take a quick shot.
You are done in fifteen minutes. You post them the next day, everyone loves it.
She would direct your next set of shoots.
27/03/2024
You have just attended one of the most rapturous, revealing and enthralling sessions ever. You have listened to how a company is built. How the first YC company in Nigeria was built. You listened to someone who resigned from World Bank to join a startup, found fulfillment in building structures and systems.
You have learnt about how recruitment can make or mar a company.
You do not have a 9–5 at the moment, but you have clarity about the kind of 9–5 you want to do next.
Your friend Michael tells you how inspired and challenged he is, you reply with how amazingly inspired you are.
If people have put in the work, and have made it work, you can put in the work, and make it work.
27/03/202x
You finally completed your MBA (or a fully sponsored Masters) and got an offer from one of your dream companies. You had taken a week leave after your last promotion to celebrate your birthday because you deserve it.
Your partner gives you a Swavorski bracelet and a Tissot wristwatch.
Your friend Olawale got you a VIP ticket at Stamford Bridge to watch Chelsea women take on Olympic Lyon in the UWCL group-stage. He finally got his fully sponsored LLM and luckily secured a job with a top-firm afterwards.
Cornelius is flying in to watch the match too, he thinks Lyon will win, I tell him they are living in past glory and we are the present.
C is done with his MBA, and he is going back to Nigeria next summer- we have to build our country, his favorite mantra.
Your friend Michael and your brother Michael, invite you for their book-readings. They finished their MFA last year and secured their first publishing deal. They held simultaneous book-launch; to draw diverse audience, they said. Their publisher agreed. Two heads are better than one, two good heads.
The books were mindblowing, and have been reviewed by the biggest platforms including The Guardian, New York Times.
At the moment, they are speaking to a couple Nigeria publishers with Ouida Books and Narrative Landscape at top of mind.
They have been invited to have a book reading at one of the biggest writers workshop in USA. You shall be there.
You fly from London to Iowa the next day and your partner convinces you for the umpteenth time about moving to the US.
You are worried about settling down, your partner loves the US, but you love Europe and being able to Speak French and German fluently means you can convince your company to retain you in either of their branches in Berlin or Paris since she doesn’t like the ubiquity and rising cost of living in the UK.
You have plans to return to Nigeria, but you do not know when yet. A couple of your friends like Chidinma and Dunni are working on some impact finance project, while some others have delved into infrastructural finance. There is a lot of possibilities when a country is in the right direction and everyone is happy APC finally left the power after decades of tussle. You hope the new government brings newness to the nation.
It isn’t your major worry though, you are have adual-citizenship with equities in a US company, but your mother’s land is always home.
Your biggest worry right now though is the kind of engagement ring you want to get. You have scheduled a call with Oyin, Zoe, Mariam and Tega.
It is their specialisation, you’re sure they’d give you the right guidance.
You are about get married, and you mum’s fears will dissipate, and all is well with the world again…but for now, you’d keep working hard to ensure the next 27/03 is better than the last one. After all, the path of the righteous shines brighter and brighter. Doesn’t it?
Post-script:
I knew I wanted to write a post and I was sure I didn’t want to do the 20-something lessons I learnt in my 20s” so I played around another creative non-fiction with major milestones across the decade. I hope you love it.
For me, the biggest lesson is really that, life is a phase, and today’s worries are minute when compared to tomorrow’s realities. Don’t worry about life that you forget about living.
Shalom.
P:s- Feel free to show me some love if you enjoyed reading this.
