I have now been out here for just over eighty days, days which have sometimes felt like they have been punctuated by starts and stops. There were the two weeks of self-quarantining in which nothing seemed to happen, then a two day week occasioned by the Eid al-Adha holidays, and most recently a three day … Continue reading Fits, Starts and a Dim View (of Humanity)
The less common variant of the “Where are you from” question I get comes from the unconventional way my surname is spelt. Family folklore suggests that my great-grandfather, whether in a fit of pique or an attempt to be contrarian – no one is certain which it is, took his rather mundane Yoruba name, replaced … Continue reading Got ‘Til its (Kinda) Gone
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash ** It was my birthday the other day, and in keeping with what is becoming a tradition of sorts, I spent the morning wading through a flurry of WhatsApp and text messages before a fairly lengthy video call with the niece who I almost share a birthday with. The … Continue reading Forty-One
Photo by Timothy L Brock on Unsplash ** For all S’s protestations to the contrary, it is my contention that there are far worse vices than playing Football Manager. On the odd occasion, when I am caught off-guard, I’ll admit the arguments for this can be tenuous at best but I sincerely believe there is a … Continue reading Vices, Spices and A Question of Identity
Not a day seems to pass without my having a staring contest with a cat. What has been most intriguing about this is all the very different places I find them: the bus stop at 6 am, outside the main shop at 4 pm, during my evening walk at 9 pm and most recently out … Continue reading The Other Things That COVID brought…
Of the many conversations I have had over the past few years, one sticks out in my mind, not for its length or its importance but for how odd it felt at the time. As I recall it, a travelling salesman and I had just finished a meeting and were heading to the kitchenette at … Continue reading On Leaving
This week’s assignment was to interview someone, summarizing what we learned about them in 300 to 500 words. Here goes.. Image by Clint McKoy on Unsplash *** R was hunched over his phone typing furiously when I pushed the door open and walked into the restaurant, one of the many that dot the roadside on this corner … Continue reading Writing Creative Non-Fiction – Assignment #3: An Interview of Sorts
Today’s CoE #LiveLent Devotional invites us to reflect on baptism, and how it is a symbol of our death and resurrection with Christ. Here goes: *** I come to this water, let me go beneath its flood and die, and then arise reborn, raised to freedom and new desires. Let me sense your welcome, your … Continue reading 15. Baptism
For Lent this year, I’m choosing to reflect via the medium of poetry, inspired in part by Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound podcast and an inability to pray, in any formal sense of the word. What started as a season of uncertainty has evolved into something bigger, hence this, an attempt to use poetry as … Continue reading 1. A Poem For Remembering We Are Dust
The year I turned thirty, I was a student battling to put finishing touches to my master’s degree dissertation and pondering what the future had in store for me. That the success or failure of that year, and the year before that, came down to that singular task was the result of an unanticipated turn … Continue reading By Degrees: Lessons from My Decade of Being Thirty Something
